Advance care planning
Make your wishes known when you cannot speak for yourself: upload your advance care planning documents to your My Health Record.
What is advance care planning?
Advance care planning is the process of detailing your future medical care preferences. It provides guidance to your family, close friends and healthcare providers if you can no longer speak for yourself or make your own decisions.
By adding an advance care planning document to your record, your wishes can be safely and securely accessed if they were ever needed in a medical emergency.
You, your nominated and authorised representatives can add an advance care planning document to your record.
Make your wishes known when you cannot speak for yourself: upload your advance care planning documents to your My Health Record
What are the benefits of adding an advance care planning document?
There are many situations where an advance care planning document may be used. For instance, if you were taken to hospital while unconscious - your doctor could look at your advance care planning document to understand your wishes and treatment.
Your documents could also be useful if you were living in a residential aged care facility and became ill or unable to communicate. Your treating nurses could then look at these documents when providing care.
If you change your advance care planning document, you will need to add a new version to your record
Important tips to make sure your wishes are known
Important tips to make sure your wishes are known
Write down your wishes
Write down your wishes
Follow these steps:
- Write your wishes into an advance care planning document. Your wishes could be about life-prolonging treatments or services that you do or don’t want
- Discuss your wishes/preferences with your family and loved ones
- List the names and contact details of a substitute decision maker who can speak on your behalf
- When completed, save your advance care planning document to your computer as a PDF document. If you only have it in paper form, scan it in and save it as a PDF document.
There are different legal requirements for each state and territory. Refer to the Advance Care Planning Australia website for your requirements.
Tips when uploading a document
Tips when uploading a document
- When naming your document, include your full name, the words, ‘advance care plan’ and the date. For example: John Smith Advance Care Plan 20 March 2020.pdf
- To ensure your doctors can view the PDF it is recommended that it does not exceed 21MB
- PDFs lower than 21MB will be easier to view on your mobile phone if you choose to do so
- If necessary, try scanning the document in black and white rather than colour to reduce the file size.
Your advance care planning document can be added to your record and updated at any time
What documents are needed to add an advance care plan to My Health Record?
What documents are needed to add an advance care plan to My Health Record?
You will need:
- a scanned PDF copy of your advance care planning document, and
- your advance care document custodian’s details.
How to upload an advance care plan
How to upload an advance care plan
- Sign in to My Health Record:
Sign in to My Health Record via myGov
- From the Documents tab, select the Advance Care Planning link
- Click the Add an Advance Care Planning Document button
- Scroll down to the Select a PDF file to upload section and select Browse to find the scanned PDF copy of your advance care planning document saved to your computer
- Enter the date that the document was last updated
- Enter the name and contact number of the person who wrote the plan
- Select Next. The document will be uploaded.
- Once the document is uploaded, you can check that you uploaded the correct document, it’s the right way up, and all pages are included
- Are you happy with the document upload? If you’re happy, select Save and then OK or if you wish to make changes, click Cancel. Then make the necessary changes in the document and start the process again.
Review and revise your advance care plan and goals of care documents as your wishes, preferences and/or advance care document custodian changes.
How to upload your advance care document custodian’s details
How to upload your advance care document custodian’s details
Once your plan has been uploaded, you can then add the details of 2 custodians to your record.
Getting started:
- Sign in to My Health Record:
Sign in to My Health Record via myGov
- Select the Documents tab
- Go to the advance care planning overview page
- Select the Add a custodian button found on the advance care planning overview page
- Enter one or more custodian names
- Select the Save button
- You can use your My Health Record to view and update your advance care planning documents or custodians at any time.
How to remove an advance care planning or goals of care document?
How to remove an advance care planning or goals of care document?
- Sign in to My Health Record:
Sign in to My Health Record via myGov
- Select the Documents tab followed by Advance care planning
- Scroll down to Advance care planning documents available on this record, select your Advance Care Planning document you wish to remove.
- Select Remove
- You will then be given the option to hide or remove the document.
If you're an authorised representative or full access nominated representative and want to remove someone's advance care planning document, call the My Health Record help line 1800 723 471
Online learning module
We have an online learning module to help you understand more about advance care planning information in My Health Record.
Webinar
What is advance care planning?
Learn about it's importance and how My Health Record can assist.