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A Patient Advocate’s Pet Peeve

By Jamie Long
Chief Patient Advocate
GolderCare Solutions

GolderCare has been doing Patient Advocacy for 16 years now.

Before that, I started the first Elder Law practice in this region of the country.  In 2008, after we had developed Elder Law as much as we could, we founded GolderCare to do aging advocacy that we couldn’t do in a law office setting.

Finally, in 2019, I retired my law license and transferred my law practice to attorney Benjamin Bekel. Today, I’m a full-time Patient Advocate with GolderCare.

Because I retired as an attorney, I no longer represent clients in court. And I no longer draft legal documents, like Wills, Trusts, Powers of Attorney, Living Wills, and so on.

Just because I no longer have to draft and prepare such documents, however, doesn’t mean I no longer have to work with them. A lot of Patient Advocacy revolves around working with disabled or incapacitated people. It tends to involve a lot of surrogate decision-making in which an able person has to make decisions for someone else who is unable to make them for themselves.

In ideal cases, the person making decisions for another is doing so pursuant to a Power of Attorney. The person making the decisions is called the “agent,” or “attorney-in-fact.”  The person needing someone else to make decisions for them is called the “principal,” the person who made the Power of Attorney.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the foresight to make a Power of Attorney. As Patient Advocates, this is one of our pet peeves. We refer to it, rather colorfully, as “Driving Off the Cliff,” or as “Drive-off-the-Cliff-type planning.” Either way, we don’t like it. Either way, we disapprove.

Some people never turn on the headlights. Some people never check the map. They just keep driving until there’s no more roadway beneath them. They seem to sail off the cliff at 80 miles per hour.

Tragically, the result is often a crash landing. The severity of the landing determines the difficulty in helping them to pick up the pieces of their lives and to move forward with the next phase of their journey.

When I was an attorney, I used to lecture people constantly about the necessity of planning ahead and “getting their ducks in a row.” Back in those days, people tended to discount or dismiss my advice, countering that I was just trying to drum up business and profit from the planning I was recommending.

How times have changed! These days, I no longer make my living from Life & Estate Planning.  I have absolutely no financial incentive to continue recommending that people plan ahead to avoid – or, at least, better manage – the crises life hands them as they age.  

And yet, I continue my incessant and urgent harangue. Get your Life Planning in order! Keep your Life Planning in order!! Planning ahead to manage your affairs when you become incapacitated is the single most important component of the planning process!!! Amazingly, people take my advice more seriously now.

Yes, taxes, insurance, financial, and estate planning are important. Yes, you should do all of them. (And, again, I have no financial incentive in recommending any of them.) But planning ahead to manage disability or incapacity as we age is the lynchpin of successful planning and, therefore, successful aging. Without this lynchpin, the planning wheel is likely to fall off the axle, thereby disabling the vehicle carrying us on our aging life’s journey.

Remember, failing to plan is essentially planning to fail.  And it always seems too much and too early until it’s too little and too late.

GolderCare Solutions is an independent advocacy group for seniors, the disabled and those that care for them. GolderCare has offices in Moline and Bettendorf. You can reach GolderCare at (309) 764-2273 or learn more at www.goldercare.com.