Your Health Care. Your Choice.
Make a personal plan for good care today and over your lifetime.
Starting at 18 years old, you can make your own health care choices and write down your care choices in a personal care plan. Your care plan helps you take control of your health care decisions to get the best possible care that matches your care goals, priorities and care choices.
It's easy to make your own care plan. Our Who's Your Agent?® Program is a step-by-step health care planning process that helps you:
- Have conversations with family and important people to make your care choices;
- Use MA planning documents to write down your care choices;
- Get better care that honors your care choices today and everyday over your lifetime.
Get Started now to make your own care plan:
Start a simple conversation with a person you trust to be your Health Care Agent and complete a Health Care Proxy and Personal Directive (Living Will).
Build on your conversations with your doctors and care teams, and update your plan to manage chronic illness and live well with serious illness.
See the full Who's Your Agent?® Health Care Planning Process. It's your roadmap for better care that honors your care choices over your lifetime.
Who's Your Agent?® Program
Who's Your Agent? is our structured health care planning process and tool kits for consumers and care professionals. Start with a simple conversation to make a plan using the Getting Started Tool Kit. Build on your conversations - from simple to serious illness - and update your plan using the Next Step Tool Kit.
Getting Started Tool Kit
Start with a simple conversation to choose a Health Care Agent and complete a Health Care Proxy document. Give instructions for your care in a Personal Directive (Living Will) document.
1. Who's Your Agent?
Choose a trusted person as your Health Care Agent and appoint your Agent in a Health Care Proxy (HCP) document.
2. What Matters to Me?
Write down your instructions for how you want to be cared in a Personal Directive (PD) also known as a Living Will.
3. Talk About Your Care.
Share your documents with your doctors and care team to place in your medical record, and talk about your care goals and choices.
Why make a plan? If you get sick and cannot make health care decision yourself — even for a short time while to get better — your Health Care Agent can step in with the legal power to talk with your doctors and get you the care you want. You appoint your Health Care Agent in a Health Care Proxy document.
Having a plan PROTECTS YOU in getting the care you want, helps your family, doctors and other important people know how to care for you, and ensures smoother care transitions in our health system for the best possible care.
The tool kit includes: a MA Health Care Proxy document, a MA Personal Directive (Living Will) document, a "I Have a Health Care Proxy" wallet card, the 5 Things to Talk About With your Care Providers conversation guide.
Quick Downloads:
Honoring Choices MA Health Care Proxy (HCP) document [download PDF]
Honoring Choices MA Personal Directive /Living Will (PD) document [download PDF]
Next StepsTool Kit
Build on your conversations with your doctors and care teams and update your plan as your health changes to promote wellness, manage chronic illness and live well with serious illness.
1. Build on Your Conversations
Use handy conversation guides to talk with your doctors and care teams, as your health and care choices change.
2. Update & Add Documents
Consider a Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA), a Comfort Care/Do Not Resuscitate Order (CC/DNR) or a Medical Order for Life Sustaining Treatment (MOLST).
3. Get Better Care that Honors Your Choices
Get care that is right for you to manage chronic illness and live well with serious illness.
Having on-going conversations with your care providers and other important people as your health needs change, and updating and your plan, helps ensure you receive quality care that matches with your care goals, priorities and care choices.
The tool kit includes: the HCM Consumer Conversation Guide Series to talk with your care professionals about your care goals and choices as your health needs change, and fact sheets and sample forms to add to your plan as you like with a MA Durable Power of Attorney, Comfort Care/Do Not Resuscitate Order (CC/DNR) Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (MOLST).
Conversation Guides. See and download all the guides on the Resources page:
- Conversation Guide for Consumers
- Honoring Choices Consumer Conversation Guides Series 1-4
- What Matters to Me- A Workbook for People with Serious Illness, from The Conversation Project and Ariadne Labs
- Conversation Guides for Care Professionals
- Honoring Choices Care Provider Conversation Guides Series 1-4; mirrors the Consumer Conversation Guide Series 1-4.
- Serious Illness Conversation Guide, Ariadne Labs
The Honoring Choices Partner Network
Get help to make a plan from an Honoring Choices Partner in your community.
The Honoring Choices MA (HCM) Partner Network is a voluntary collaborative network of health care and community organizations, state and local entities, and interprofessional care team members from across the Commonwealth. The HCM Partners use or refer to the HCM planning process and free downloadable tools to:
- Inform and empower consumers to make a personal plan;
- Enhance the knowledge & skills of care professionals as Health Care Planning Ambassadors to confidently engage adults in planning conversations;
- Provide/connect adults to timely equitable care in their community.
Want to Join the HCM Partner Network?
It’s no cost. We support our Partner's shared mission and tailor webinars for consumers and care professionals. You can use our multi-lingual tools or use your own tools. As a collaborative network, we do not refer or recommend partners but post your organization's mission on our HCM Partner webpage.
The HCM Partner Network is making a significant impact:
- Started 2.7 million planning conversations
- Connected 2.6 million adults to needed care in their community
- Co-hosted thousands of consumer care planning webinars
- Trained over 6500 staff as Health Care Planning Ambassadors
- Lead innovative joint initiatives for improved health outcomes
- See more about the HCM have accomplished
Meet the Partners
Together the HCM Partners provide a seamless flow of reliable, accurate care planning information and equal access to the Honoring Choices no cost multi-lingual tools, to improve timely, quality care across the care continuum.
Learn more about the Statewide Cross-Continuum Partners, Community Partners, Alliance Partners and New England Partners below.
Statewide Cross-Continuum Partners
The Statewide Cross-Continuum Partners are helping to standardize care planning information across the Commonwealth. We support their innovation programs to help consumers and care professionals engage in meaningful planning conversations- from simple to serious illness - and make a plan for good care today and over their lifetime. Thanks to-
- MA Health & Hospital Association (MHA) and Cross-Continuum Partner, HCM, MA Medical Society, LeadingAge, MA Senior Care, MA Aging Access, Home Care Alliance MA, Hospice & Palliative Care Fed/MA, leads the Simple Step Campaign;
- MA Department of Public Health, leads the statewide Health Care Proxy Campaign supported by HCM and MHA;
- MA Executive Office of Aging & Independence, co-hosts HCM consumer webinars and staff trainings for the MA Councils on Aging and Mass Aging Access members and supports the MA POLST Program;
- Ariadne Labs, Serious Illness Care Program, Serious Illness Conversation Guide, included in HCM interprofessional care team webinars; a special thanks to Dr. Erik Fromme, Ariadne Labs, for lending a model to HCM Who's Your Agent? Health Care Planning Process.
Community Partners
Consumers: Get help to make your plan from a Community Partner in your area. Find a Community Partner near you.
Alliance Partners
Diverse organizations who use or refer to the Who's Your Agent? Program to engage adults in conversations, train staff as Health Care Planning Ambassadors, and work together on joint projects.
New England Collective
Download state specific planning documents from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to ensure we can honor your care choices across New England.
We Are Transforming Health Care Planning
Since 2013, we have worked together to improve a Person Directed, Community Centered, Integrated Care Network in Massachusetts.
Honoring Choices Massachusetts (HCM) is changing the way consumers and care professionals engage in a health care planning process to help every person in the Commonwealth get good care today and everyday over their lifetime. Since 2013 our signature Who’s Your Agent?® Program, based on Massachusetts law, recognizes the right of every adult to direct their care decisions and make a personal care plan for care. We are immensely grateful to the thousands of interprofessional care team members and organizations for adopting and implementing our collaborative planning process and tools to help adults in their community.
The Honoring Choices MA (HCM) Advisory Groups below are collaborating on key initiatives guided by the knowledge and experiences of consumers and the collective expertise of the HCM Partners. We are working together to improve and grow a person directed, community centered, team based, integrated care network for timely equitable care across the care continuum. Everyone is welcome to contribute.
- Consumer Health Equity Advisory Group
- Consumers, 18 and older, share their knowledge and drive the agenda for meaningful program and policy change.
- Guardianship, Conservatorship and Alternatives Informational Webpage and Advisory Group
- HCM Partners & consumers contributed to our informational webpage to create a reliable, accurate shared knowledge base and to help clarify and advance alternatives to avoid, modify or terminate a guardianship or conservatorship.
- HCM and MA Health & Hospital Association co-host a Guardianship Advisory Group with legal and medical professionals.
- New Paradigm for Adults with Serious Illness and Complex Care Needs Advisory Group
- HCM Partners and Friends are working to shift from the current hierarchical care paradigm to an improved person driven, team based, community centered, integrated care network for adults facing chronic and serious illness.
- Community Based Palliative Care Workgroup
- A workgroup of the New Paradigm Advisory Group is leading a unique interactive webinar series ‘Envisioning Person Driven, Community Based Palliative Care in MA”. See resources from Massachusetts and National experts to date.
- Community Based Palliative Care Workgroup
- HCM Partners and Friends are working to shift from the current hierarchical care paradigm to an improved person driven, team based, community centered, integrated care network for adults facing chronic and serious illness.