As an agebuzz reader, no doubt you’re aware of the value of advance care planning: both to ensure that your values and wishes control your health care at the end of life and to help loved ones with the difficult decisions that need to be made as death approaches. It’s not a perfect system- and in many ways, the advance care planning documents can be executed without having the heart-to-heart conversations that should undergird these choices. But if done with good intent, it just may be that your wishes will be followed and your loved ones will be relieved of the burden of determining what you would want for yourself.

However, we all know these are hard conversations. And a recent poll conducted by the home care company Home Instead, in collaboration with the Marist College Poll, revealed something rather startling: 1 in 6 Americans would rather have a colonoscopy than speak with their loved ones about end-of-life planning! On a more hopeful note, while 45% of those surveyed said they had not spoken with loved ones about what they would wish for in their final years, they did admit that the pandemic had increased the likelihood that such conversations would occur. As a result, Home Instead has developed something they call the “Elderoscopy:” that is, a set of questions and conversation guides to facilitate these often difficult discussions. Covering a broad range of topics including, but not limited to, the end of life, the questions address such matters as your lifestyle choices for your later years, your desires should you lose your partner or can no longer drive, and how you plan to take care of your health. To find out more, prep yourself for this probe and listen here.

If you truly want to digitize this process and ensure that all of your choices, documents, and desires are both “in the cloud” as well as in the hearts and minds of your loved ones, there are now a range of website-based companies ready to help guide you through the maze of choices and then store your responses in a “digital vault” that can be accessed when the need arises. For example, there’s a new app called Bereev, a “death preparation” app that was developed outside of the United States but is available for US consumers. With the goal of destigmatizing death conversations and easing the lives of loved ones left behind, this website created a game of questions to provoke serious conversations about end-of-life choices. With the tagline from the founder, “When I go to heaven the last thing I want is to put my loved ones through hell,” Bereev also allows you to store in your digital vault text, audio or visual messages to be sent to loved ones once you are deceased. To find out more, click here.

A recent post in the Washington Post by columnist Liz Weston discusses the array of new digital advance care planning options. Referencing such websites as Lantern, Cake, Empathy, and Everplans, Weston noted that each of these apps provides a certain level of free support with fees for “premium” services such as cloud storage, care consultants, recommendations of ancillary supports (like tax attorneys or accountants) and other useful resources. 

Finally, we’ve previously referenced the Five Wishes advance care planning program, which takes a broader strategy regarding advance care planning than some of the more traditional documents. Addressing both emotional, personal, and spiritual wishes in addition to the more traditional approach of addressing health care choices, Five Wishes has had a strong following from people and organizations that believe death is more than just a medical event. Recently, the Five Wishes organization partnered with Vynca, an entity focused on providing and expanding the availability of palliative care, to present Five Wishes Digital, a web-based version of the traditional Five Wishes document, that will allow patients and providers to digitally execute and store a Five Wishes document, and allow you to go back and revise or amend whenever or wherever you need to. Given the way so many of us are on the move, both geographically and in different health care systems, this service should allow for one central location for you and your loved ones to access your thoughts and choices whenever necessary. For more on this new offering, boot up your computer and click here.