Where to Store Your Advance Health Directive in WA
The Storage Problem That Undermines Most Directives
You can spend hours completing a legally perfect Advance Health Directive (AHD). Get the Part 4 treatment decisions right. Have it properly witnessed. Then lock it in a filing cabinet — and it will do absolutely nothing during a 2 AM emergency admission.
Western Australia does not maintain a centralised register for Advance Health Directives. There is no government database that hospitals can search. If the treating team cannot locate your directive, they will follow the statutory hierarchy for non-urgent treatment and make clinical judgments based on what your family tells them — which may not match what you documented.
Storage and distribution are not administrative afterthoughts. They are what make the document functional.
Layer 1: My Health Record (The Most Important Step)
My Health Record is a Commonwealth system managed by the Australian Digital Health Agency. It is the closest thing Australia has to a centralised directive register, and it can make your AHD available to treating healthcare professionals who access it during an admission.
How to upload:
- Log in to myGov (my.gov.au) and navigate to your linked My Health Record
- Go to the "Advance Care Planning" section
- Upload your signed AHD as a document
Scanning tips to avoid rejection:
- Scan in black-and-white, not colour — colour scans of multi-page documents routinely exceed the 20 MB upload limit
- Set the scanner to 300 dpi — high enough for legibility, low enough for file size
- Save as PDF, not individual image files
- If the file is still too large, use a free PDF compression tool to reduce it below 20 MB
This upload can make your AHD available to treating healthcare professionals at a public hospital, private hospital, or aged-care facility that checks your My Health Record during an admission. WA public hospitals are progressively integrating My Health Record checks into their intake workflows, but coverage is not universal — which is why the physical copies below still matter.
Layer 2: Your GP's Medical Record
Give a certified copy of your signed AHD to your primary GP. Ask them to:
- Upload it to your local electronic medical record (in addition to My Health Record — GP practice software and My Health Record are separate systems)
- Note the existence of the directive on your file summary, so any locum or after-hours doctor accessing your records can see it flagged
If you change GPs, provide a copy to the new practice and ask them to transfer the notation.
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Layer 3: Physical Copies to Key People
Provide certified copies to:
- Your enduring guardian (if you have appointed one under an EPG) — they need to know the scope of decisions already covered by the AHD, and where their EPG authority begins
- Your substitute guardian — backup in case the primary guardian is unreachable
- Close family members who are likely to be contacted during a medical emergency
- The administration office of any residential aged-care facility you reside in — the facility should file it with your intake paperwork and flag it for clinical staff
Layer 4: The Original Document
Keep the original signed AHD in a secure but accessible location at home. A fireproof safe or locked filing cabinet is appropriate — but someone other than you needs to know where it is and how to access it. If the original is locked in a safe that only you can open, and you are unconscious in hospital, it is functionally inaccessible.
Leave a clear note in a location your family will check (with your will, for example) explaining where the original is stored.
Layer 5: Emergency Alert Card
Carry a wallet card — a small, laminated note — stating:
- That you have an Advance Health Directive
- The date it was signed
- The name and phone number of your enduring guardian
- A note that the directive is on My Health Record
This is particularly important for ambulance crews and emergency departments, where the first clinical decisions happen fast. A wallet card can prompt the treating team to check My Health Record before defaulting to standard resuscitation protocols.
What Happens When the Directive Cannot Be Found
If none of these layers produce a directive during a medical crisis, the treating doctor follows the statutory hierarchy for non-urgent treatment: an enduring guardian or guardian with authority first, then spouse or de facto partner, adult children, parents, siblings, a primary unpaid carer, and another person with a close personal relationship. The doctor seeks consent from the first person on the list who is at least 18, has full legal capacity, is reasonably available, and is willing to make the decision.
Without an AHD, the clinical team also relies on whatever information family members can provide about the patient's wishes — which may be incomplete, contradictory, or distorted by the stress of the moment. This is exactly the scenario an AHD is designed to prevent.
After Any Update
If you revoke and replace your AHD, repeat the entire distribution process. Remove the old version from My Health Record and upload the new one. Retrieve or mark old copies held by your GP, guardian, and family. Leaving old copies in circulation creates confusion — a hospital that finds two versions with different dates will struggle to determine which is current, potentially delaying treatment.
The Western Australia Advance Directive & Living Will Kit includes a document distribution log, a My Health Record upload walkthrough with screenshot references, and a printable wallet alert card template — so every layer of storage is covered in a single workflow.
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