What Your Florida Health Care Surrogate Needs to Know

Most people say yes without hesitating. Your daughter, your brother, your best friend since college. Then the day comes, and that person is in a hallway at two in the morning, answering a question the two of you never discussed, with your other children on speakerphone disagreeing.

That is not a paperwork failure. The document was signed. It is an information failure, and it is the part you can fix in one afternoon at the kitchen table.

What Florida creates when you sign

In Florida the document is a designation of health care surrogate under section 765.202. If you brought a medical power of attorney from another state, this is its Florida cousin. The rules are short, and people still get them wrong.

• You sign before two adult witnesses, and at least one of them is neither your spouse nor a blood relative.
• The person you name as surrogate cannot be one of those witnesses.
• Name an alternate for the day your first choice is not willing, able, or reasonably available. That is often the day they are in the same accident.
• The statute requires that an exact copy be provided to the surrogate. Not the location of the copy. The copy.

When the authority actually starts

By default, not until your primary physician concludes you lack capacity and enters that in your medical record (section 765.204). Until then you decide, because Florida presumes you are capable, and that determination is not a finding that you are incapacitated for any other purpose.

You can change the default. The statute lets you stipulate that the authority is exercisable immediately, with no incapacity determination required. For a spouse reaching the insurer through six months of treatment, that is a relief. For a parent handing it to an adult child, it is a lot of authority to give away early.

The living will does a different job

Your surrogate decides. Your living will instructs. Under section 765.302 it covers one narrow situation: life prolonging procedures when you have a terminal condition, an end stage condition, or are in a persistent vegetative state. Two physicians, your primary and at least one consulting, must separately examine you first (section 765.306). Signed properly, it creates a rebuttable presumption of clear and convincing evidence of what you wanted, which is the cover your surrogate needs when relatives disagree.

Seven things to hand your surrogate before anyone needs them

1. 1Your doctors. The physician you want attending, the hospitals you prefer, and anyone you would rather not have treating you. Names and numbers, written down.
2. 2Your conditions and medications. A current list, allergies included. If you have a condition that can look like a psychiatric symptom, say so, and say you want it ruled out first.
3. 3Your history. Surgeries and procedures with approximate dates. Your surrogate will be asked quickly, on the worst day of their year.
4. 4Your faith and your values. Whether you want a priest, pastor or chaplain called, and any customs or rites that matter to your family. In many of the families we serve, this is the first thing the room asks about and the last thing anyone wrote down.
5. 5How aggressive you want care to be, in your own words. A sentence like "I want to be able to recognize my grandchildren" tells your surrogate more than any checkbox.
6. 6Who else gets a voice. If you have four children and named one, tell all of them it was your decision and why. Your surrogate should never have to defend a choice that was yours.
7. 7Where everything lives. The designation, the living will, the HIPAA release, your insurance cards, your attorney's number.

If you name no one

Florida does not leave a blank. Section 765.401 supplies a proxy in a fixed order: a court appointed guardian, then your spouse, your adult children by majority, a parent, adult siblings, an adult relative who has shown special care and concern, a close friend, and finally a licensed clinical social worker chosen through the provider's bioethics committee.

Read that list with your actual family in mind. It cannot know that your oldest lives in Tampa and your youngest is the nurse. And "by majority" is where siblings who have not spoken since a funeral end up deciding together, at speed.