We live in a mobile society. Many people reside in one state during the summer and another state in the winter. It is reasonable to wonder if your advance directive will be respected should you be admitted to a hospital or nursing home in another state.

There is presently no federal law that requires each state to respect an advance directive signed in another state. More than half of the states have laws that recognize the validity of a living will or durable power of attorney executed in accordance with the laws of another state.

One study suggested that half of the medical directives are not delivered to the hospital or nursing home because the documents were placed in "safekeeping" in a drawer, a lockbox, or a safety deposit box. The reason: the documents are simply too bulky to carry around all the time. MedNotice solves this problem by giving you a wallet card. The card gives medical personnel immediate access to your medical directive.

Another study found that only 26% of incapacitated patients with advance directives had their directives recognized "under clinical circumstances when they should be invoked." This study implied that the hospital admissions process was not adequately determining the existence of previously-written advance directives, securing those directives, and placing them into the patient's chart.