Sabrina Winters, an
estate planning lawyer in North Carolina, understands that the beginning of the school year is a hectic time of planning and preparation for families. Parents are outfitting children with school clothes, stocking up on school supplies, setting up after-care and extracurricular activities, and making carpool schedules. In the midst of this preparation, Sabrina advises that it’s also an important time for parents to safeguard their children in the event of an emergency.
“Parents are used to filling out emergency contact forms for their children at school,” notes Sabrina Winters, an attorney with the
Charlotte estate planning law firm Sabrina Winters, Attorney at Law, PLLC. “These are a good start, but they only get parents so far. Parents need emergency medical information to be available for their child wherever an emergency may strike, and it must be detailed enough to be truly useful to health care providers, especially if the parent can’t be reached right away.”
In addition, parents who are both travelling, who send kids away for a weekend with the grandparents, or are otherwise hard to reach quickly may see a need for additional help in an emergency. Sabrina sometimes advises parents to name another person to authorize emergency medical care for a child (e.g., if a child breaks a leg while with grandma). This document is sometimes called a Temporary Medical Authorization.
“Some parents also like to provide instructions about who should take care of their children temporarily in the unlikely event that something happens to both parents simultaneously, like a bad car accident,” explains Sabrina. “Parents can name a local person(s) to take care of their children until the child’s named legal guardian is available.” In some cases, this legal guardian, for instance, a sibling of the parent, lives out of state and needs a few days to arrive on the scene. Naming a local temporary guardian can avoid having the child(ren) placed in foster care for those few days.
To ensure that a child’s important information is known in a medical emergency, Sabrina Winters, Attorney at Law, PLLC registers its clients in a service that provides instant electronic access to a child’s emergency information and documents. This program is designed to provide access to the information a non-parent caregiver might need in case the child in their care faces an emergency situation.
This service, called Minors Matter, provides a wallet card that parents can give to the child’s caregivers -- babysitters, grandparents, neighbors, even older siblings. The card displays the child’s allergies, medical conditions and pediatrician, and allows hospitals and doctors to immediately get additional, detailed emergency information about the child from the Minors Matter website or via fax. To speak with
estate planning lawyer Sabrina Winters about enrolling in Minors Matter, visit her website at
http://www.ncestateplanninginfo.com.
Parents of college students also face particular challenges in the face of a medical emergency. “When it comes to health care, college students over 18 are legal adults, even if parents are paying their tuition and otherwise still responsible for them,” explains Sabrina Winters.
Because of the federal health care privacy law called HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), hospitals have been known to refuse to give parents any information about their child who was admitted for a medical emergency, even if the parents are out-of-state. This, naturally, leaves parents frantic.
But, advises Sabrina Winters, college students can erase this obstacle by completing a legal form called a “HIPAA release.” This form permits hospitals and medical professionals to talk with their parents. Explains Sabrina Winters, “a HIPAA release (or healthcare power of attorney) can mean the difference between knowing what is happening with your college student in a medical emergency and being completely shut out.”
As with younger children’s information, the HIPAA release needs to be available at the hospital to be useful. Sabrina also registers college students in a companion service called DocuBank I.C.E. (In Case of Emergency), which also includes a wallet card for the student to carry.
With both of these services, when the card is used at the hospital, parents receive an immediate alert, as well as the phone number at the hospital to call for more information.
“Understanding the challenges that parents face is our job as we plan for their family. We work with families to ensure that they have the protections they need for their children,” said Sabrina. To meet this need, the firm is providing special back-to-school planning for families with children.
Sabrina Winters, located in Charlotte, North Carolina, specializes in planning for families with children and general estate planning.
Attorney Sabrina Winters is a member of the national attorney network on LawyerCentral.com.
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