An Advanced Care Plan is a document that takes the place of a living will or death-with-dignity declaration.

The Advanced Care Plan is relatively new in Arkansas. It deals with a quality of life and an unacceptable quality of life and allows the maker of the Advanced Care Plan to set out what they determine to be an unacceptable quality of life in four areas.

These four areas are:

1. Permanently unconscious condition
2. Permanently confused condition
3. Need assistance with all of my activities of daily living, and
4. A terminable condition where I have taken all of the treatment and there is nothing left to take.

The person making an Advanced Care Plan will check any or all of the above which that person believes to be an unacceptable quality of life.

If that person’s life is beset by one of the unacceptable quality-of-life conditions which that person has chosen, then that person can decide on the treatment in the following ways:

1. Do you want CPR?
2. Do you want tube feeding or IV fluids?
3. Do you want treatment of a new condition?
4. Do you want life support?

You make the choices on what is an unacceptable quality of life and you make the decision on what treatment you want if you have an unacceptable quality of life.