Where to Store an Advance Directive in the ACT

A perfectly executed Health Direction does nothing if the treating team at Canberra Hospital cannot find it at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. Where you store your advance care planning documents is as important as what you write in them.

MyDHR: The ACT Hospital System

The most critical storage location is the MyDHR patient portal operated by Canberra Health Services. When you upload certified copies of your Health Direction and Statement of Choices to MyDHR, the documents are flagged in the clinical system used by Canberra Hospital, Calvary Public Hospital, and other ACT public health facilities.

To upload, scan your executed documents and either submit them through the MyDHR patient portal or email certified copies directly to the Canberra Health Services Clinical Planning Framework (CPF) scanning registry. The registry team will link the documents to your patient record.

This is the single most important step because it puts your documents where the treating team will actually look during an emergency admission. Without this upload, clinicians have to rely on your family producing physical copies — which may not happen if the crisis occurs while your family is interstate or unreachable.

My Health Record: National Visibility

Australia's national My Health Record system can provide a cross-jurisdictional backup. If you upload your advance care planning documents here, they may be available to healthcare providers in other jurisdictions who have access to your record — useful if you receive emergency treatment in NSW (common for the Canberra–Queanbeyan corridor) or while travelling.

My Health Record and MyDHR are separate systems. Uploading to one does not automatically populate the other. For complete coverage, upload to both.

PTG Safe Custody: Physical Originals

The Public Trustee and Guardian (PTG) operates a Will and EPoA Register where you can deposit original documents for safekeeping. The current fee is $220–$228 for deposit. The PTG stores the originals in secure facilities and can produce them when needed.

Safe custody with the PTG is optional — it does not provide legal registration or clinical access. Its value is protection against loss, damage, or family disputes over the physical originals. If you choose this option, retain certified copies for distribution to your attorney, GP, and the hospital system.

Retrieving a document from PTG custody requires a formal request and a regulated retrieval fee (around $166).

Access Canberra Land Titles: Property Transactions Only

If your EPoA grants property and financial powers and your attorney may need to sell, mortgage, or transfer real property, the original EPoA must be registered with the Access Canberra Land Titles Office. The standard registration fee is approximately $110.

This is not general storage — it is a specific legal requirement for property dealings. An unregistered EPoA is valid for healthcare decisions, bank transactions, and Centrelink, but it is not valid for land title transactions until registered.

Who Gets Copies

Beyond the registries, distribute certified copies to:

• Every appointed attorney and substitute attorney
• Your regular GP
• Any specialists you see regularly (oncologist, neurologist, geriatrician)
• The aged care facility if you are a resident
• A trusted family member who is not your attorney (as a backup access point)

Keep a record of who has copies and when they were distributed. When you update your documents, redistribute the new versions and ask recipients to destroy the old copies to prevent confusion.

The ACT Advance Directive & Living Will Kit includes a storage and distribution tracker that maps every copy to its destination, with confirmation fields so you can verify that the right documents reached the right systems before a crisis tests whether they did.

See more Australian Capital Territory guides →