Utah Medical Power of Attorney: Healthcare Proxy Rules and Requirements

Your parent is unconscious in a Utah ICU, and three siblings are arguing about whether to continue aggressive treatment. Without a medical power of attorney, a physician must navigate a statutory surrogate hierarchy that can pit family members against each other for weeks.

Utah does not have a standalone "medical power of attorney" document. Instead, the healthcare proxy designation is Part I of the statutory Advance Health Care Directive under Utah Code Title 75A, Chapter 9. One form handles both your agent appointment and your living will instructions.

How the Healthcare Proxy Works

When you execute Utah's advance directive, you name a healthcare agent — the person authorized to make medical decisions on your behalf when you cannot make them yourself.

The agent's authority is dormant until a licensed physician, psychologist, APRN, or PA personally examines you and determines you lack healthcare decision-making capacity. That clinician must document the finding in your medical chart and note whether the impairment is likely temporary or permanent.

If you object to the capacity determination — verbally, in writing, or through gestures — your own decision-making authority overrides the agent's. You are legally presumed competent until a court rules otherwise by clear and convincing evidence.

What Your Healthcare Agent Can Do

Under the default statutory form, your agent can:

• Consent to or refuse any medical treatment, including life-sustaining measures
• Access your medical records under HIPAA
• Make decisions about autopsy, organ donation, and disposition of remains
• Authorize transfer between facilities
• Hire and fire medical providers

You can restrict any of these powers by adding specific limitations in the directive. Some families, for example, grant full treatment authority but reserve organ donation decisions for themselves.

Choosing the Right Agent

Pick someone who can handle high-pressure medical conversations without freezing, who understands your values even when they disagree with your choices, and who can realistically get to a Utah hospital within a few hours.

Your agent cannot serve as your witness when you sign the directive. Beyond that, the 2026 law removed most of the old restrictions — family members, friends, and adult children are all eligible.

Name at least one alternate agent. If your primary agent is unavailable, incapacitated, or unwilling to act, the alternate steps in without requiring a new document or court order.

What Happens Without a Healthcare Proxy

If you become incapacitated without an advance directive, Utah law activates a default surrogate hierarchy under the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act. The priority order is:

1. Court-appointed guardian (if one exists)
2. Spouse or domestic partner
3. Adult children
4. Parents
5. Adult siblings
6. Adults who have shown special care and concern for you

When two or more people share the same priority level and disagree, the attending physician must try to resolve the conflict. If consensus fails, a court-supervised guardianship proceeding becomes necessary — an expensive, adversarial process that typically costs thousands of dollars and can take months.

Agent Authority vs. POLST Orders

A common source of confusion: your healthcare agent makes decisions based on your advance directive, but a POLST (Provider Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment) is a separate clinical order signed by a physician. The POLST translates your goals into specific medical orders that paramedics and emergency responders can follow immediately.

Your advance directive guides your agent's decisions in hospitals and care facilities. A POLST is the only document that controls what happens during a 911 call or transport. Most adults need only an advance directive. People with serious illness, advanced frailty, or terminal diagnoses should have both.

The Utah Advance Directive & Living Will Kit includes step-by-step guidance for naming your healthcare agent, defining their authority, and coordinating your proxy designation with other estate planning documents.

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