End Notes
1. “Only an estimated 25–30% of Americans have executed advance directives”: Craig Hatkoff, Rabbi Irwin Kula, and Zach Levine, “How to Die in America: Welcome to La Crosse,” Forbes (September 23, 2014).
2. “In general, physicians believe their liability risk is greater if they, mistakenly, do not attempt resuscitation than if they provide it against patient wishes. As in so many other instances, the default is to treat”: Institute of Medicine, “Dying in America,” (September 17, 2014), 3–13.
3. Katy Butler, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death (Scribner, 2013), p. 149.
4. “Healthgrades® announced Gundersen is among America’s 50 Best Hospitals™. This achievement places Gundersen among the top 1 percent of hospitals nationwide”: Gundersen Health System newsletter, “Gundersen Among HealthGrades 50 Best Hospitals” (2016).
5. “96% of those who die have signed an ‘advance directive’ ”: Craig Hatkoff, Rabbi Irwin Kula, and Zach Levine, “How to Die in America: Welcome to La Crosse,” Forbes (September 23, 2014).
6. http://www.gundersenhealth.org/respecting-choices/.
7. http://lifecareplan.kaiserpermanente.org/.
8. http://theconversationproject.org/.
Resources
Stanford Medicine’s The Letter Project provides free advance directive forms to complete.
The Coalition for Compassionate Care of California provides free advance directive forms.
U.C. San Francisco provides a free advance health care directive kit.
The State of California provides free advance health care directive forms.