Organized Records Minimize Health Crisis Chaos
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A few days after Mom’s stroke, an ambulance crew is moving Mom from the hospital to a rehabilitation facility. Dad is stressed out, losing sleep, and eating poorly because the doctor is not sure that Mom will bounce back enough to come home, and Dad knows that nursing home care is expensive. He is tearing the house apart to find documents on a checklist that the rehabilitation facility’s business office gave him to get ready for his meeting with the business office manager tomorrow morning. The records search is moving slowly, so it looks like Dad is facing another long, sleepless night.
Most people experience health crises before they die. Many people receive the most expensive health care of their lives in their last few months. Unfortunately, it is very hard to step into the household record keepers shoes and gather information when the record keeper falls ill. It is even harder for family members to get up to speed when a record keeper does not organize the records well.
Everyone should keep a well-organized file system with basic information close at hand. These are some of records that everyone’s file system should contain if the records exist:
- Identification Records: Drivers’ licenses, Social Security cards, Medicare cards, health insurance cards, DD 214 military discharge records, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and divorce decrees for prior marriages.
- Estate Plan Records: Powers of attorney, health care powers of attorney or appointments of health care representatives, physician’s orders for scope of treatment (POST), out of hospital do not resuscitate orders, last wills and testaments, and trusts.
- Financial Records: Account statements for all bank accounts (CDs, checking, savings, etc.), investment accounts, retirement accounts (IRAs, Roth IRAs, etc.), savings bonds, corporate stock, life insurance policies and policy account statements, annuity contracts and annuity account statements, etc.
- if a husband or wife has been out of the house for 30 or more continuous days as an inpatient in one or more hospitals or other health facilities, keep all account records showing account values as of the first day of hospitalization for the rest of the patient’s life; and
- keep records in every other case for at least 5 years.
- Medical Records: Medicare and health insurance notices (for at least 1 year), and admission and discharge records for any inpatient treatment out of the house for 30 or more continuous days.
- Social Security Records: The most recent Social Security Benefit Rate Change (BRI) Notice delivered December showing benefit values for the upcoming year (not the SSA-1099 notice that the Social Security administration sends at the first of the year for disclosing the previous year’s Social Security benefits for income tax purposes).
- Real Estate Records: Copies of deeds for currently owns real estate and deeds for sales or transfers of real estate if the original deeds show transferred real estate descriptions with descriptions of currently owned real estate.
A more comprehensive list of records that everyone should maintain and be able to access quickly is available for download from the bottom of Hawkins Law PC’s Elder Law webpage at: https://www.hawkinselderlaw.com/elder-law/.
Jeff R. Hawkins and Jennifer J. Hawkins are Trust & Estate Specialty Board Certified Indiana Trust & Estate Lawyers and active members of the Indiana State Bar Association and National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. Both lawyers are admitted to practice law in Indiana, and Jeff Hawkins is admitted to practice law in Illinois. Jeff is also a registered civil mediator, a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the Indiana Bar Foundation; a member of the Illinois State Bar Association and the Indiana Association of Mediators; and he was the 2014-15 President of the Indiana State Bar Association.
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