Baystate Health’s Patient Portal offers a Health Care Proxy & Personal Directive!

Baystate Health, an Honoring Choices Community Partner, and its Advance Care Planning team are leading the way to provide all patients with easy access to health care planning documents to direct their health care choices and receive quality care.

Through my Baystate Health Patient Portal, patients can download and complete a free Honoring Choices Health Care Proxy and Personal Directive (Living Will), view & update their documents, and communicate their health care choices and preferences with their clinicians.

“Making the documents easily available to all Baystate Health patients is part of our commitment to advance care planning and ensuring that everyone receives care that aligns with their goals and preferences.” Say Samantha Kennedy, Director of Strategy.

By adding care planning documents to the patient portal, patients are empowered to take control of their health care, write down their care choices, and start active goals of care conversations with their clinicians.  Clinicians can  better understand a patient’s values and priorities, and match quality care to a patient’s goals to improve everyday health and to plan for future care.

Baystate Health is the first Honoring Choices hospital partner to include both essential planning documents in their patient portal. Patients can more easily appoint a Health Care Agent in a free Health Care Proxy and give their Agents and their clinician’s information about their choices and preferences for care in a Personal Directive (Living Will).

Last year, Baystate Health embedded the Honoring Choices Health Care Proxy and Personal Directive throughout the Baystate Health system. Clinicians can access a translated Health Care Proxy (9 languages) and Personal Directive (4 languages) from their online Forms Library to foster culturally and linguistically appropriate conversations. Baystate Health and their 400 member Western MA Transitions of Care Cross Continuum have educated their care providers as Health Care Planning Ambassadors to routinely engage adults in health care planning conversations at every phase of health.

Baystate Health is also offering care planning information and tools as an informational benefit to their employees. “When employees see the value added in their own lives, they exemplify this practice with their patients, Jodi Kashouh, MS, RN-BC, CNL, Healthcare Quality Specialist, Division of Healthcare Quality. “Expanding this practice is a goal across the health system at each touch point with our patients.”

We are continually inspired by our partner Baystate Health,  and their commitment to providing timely quality care aligned with a patient’s values, care goals and choices.