The WV POST form — short for Physician Orders for Scope of Treatment — is a hot pink medical order that you complete in person with a physician, advanced practice registered nurse, or physician assistant, sign together, and then keep somewhere emergency responders can find it quickly. A copy should also go to the statewide e-Directive Registry so providers anywhere in West Virginia can pull it up at any hour. You cannot fill the form out alone at home; the face-to-face conversation with a clinician is a required part of making it valid.1https://wvendoflife.org
Who the Form Is For
The POST form is built for people with a serious, advanced illness or who are medically frail. It addresses your current medical reality, not hypothetical future scenarios, which is why healthy adults are not the intended users. Clinicians usually raise the conversation when a patient’s condition makes decisions about life-sustaining treatment relevant in the near term. If your provider has not brought it up and you think it fits your situation, you can ask them to start the discussion.
How to Start the Process
Ask your primary care provider or a specialist to initiate a POST conversation. Only a physician (MD or DO), APRN, or PA may complete the form with you, and they must do so in person. During the conversation, the clinician walks through each treatment option, explains your prognosis, and documents the orders that match what you want.
You should never be given a blank form to fill out on your own. Healthcare facilities obtain blank forms from the West Virginia Center for End-of-Life Care at wvendoflife.org or by calling 877-209-8086.1https://wvendoflife.org The form must be printed double-sided on hot pink paper. State law requires that color so emergency responders can spot it instantly.
What You Decide During the Conversation
The form covers four areas of treatment. You pick one option in each section.
CPR
This section applies only if your heart has stopped or you have stopped breathing. You can choose to have CPR attempted (chest compressions and defibrillation) or to have Do Not Attempt Resuscitation, which allows a natural death and directs responders to focus on comfort.
Level of Medical Intervention
This governs how aggressive treatment should be when you still have a pulse but face a medical emergency. Full treatment means all measures to keep you alive, including intubation, mechanical ventilation, and ICU admission. Selective treatment covers reversible conditions with IV fluids and cardiac monitoring but avoids intensive care and ventilation. Comfort-focused treatment provides relief of pain and symptoms only, without measures aimed at prolonging life.
Antibiotics
You can choose full antibiotic treatment, limited use for comfort, or no antibiotics. Your clinician will explain how each option plays out given your condition.
Medically Administered Nutrition
This section covers tube feeding when you cannot safely eat or drink by mouth. The options are a long-term feeding tube, a time-limited trial (often seven days to one month, after which the decision is revisited), no tube feeding at all, or “not discussed/no decision made,” which means standard of care is given and the topic should come up again at each hospital admission or emergency.
Signatures That Make It Valid
Two signatures are required. The clinician who conducted the conversation signs to confirm the orders reflect your wishes and current condition. You sign to acknowledge agreement. Without both signatures, the form is not enforceable.
If you cannot make medical decisions yourself, a guardian, medical power of attorney representative, or healthcare surrogate may sign for you. A surrogate is authorized to act without a court order. When your wishes are not reasonably known and cannot be determined, the person signing must act in your best interest.
Where to Keep the Form
Keep the original hot pink form somewhere emergency responders will see it right away. The front of the refrigerator and a bedside table are the most common spots. Give copies to your primary care provider and any specialists involved in your care. Copies printed on the same bright pink paper are legally valid, so a hospital or nursing facility can keep the original and send a pink copy with you during a transfer. At a healthcare facility, the form is kept as the first page of your medical record.
Submitting to the e-Directive Registry
The West Virginia e-Directive Registry stores your POST form digitally so providers across the state can access it at any time, even if the paper version is lost. Submission is strongly recommended. You can fax a copy to 844-616-1415 or mail it to PO Box 9022, 64 Medical Center Drive, Morgantown, WV 26506. The Registry is maintained by the West Virginia Center for End-of-Life Care through the WV Health Information Network.1https://wvendoflife.org
Changing or Voiding the Form
You can change or cancel your POST form at any time, but only after another conversation with your healthcare provider (or, if you lack capacity, with your legal decision-maker). The form should never be changed or voided outside that conversation.
To void the form, write “VOID” in large letters across both the front and the back, and write the date underneath. If you want different orders, a new POST form is completed through the same in-person process. The voided form stays in your medical record rather than being thrown away. Send both the voided form and any new form to the e-Directive Registry so the system reflects your current wishes. If no new form is completed after voiding, submit the voided form anyway so it can be removed from the active listing.
How the POST Form Fits With an Advance Directive
A POST form does not replace an advance directive or a living will. An advance directive is a legal document expressing your general wishes and appointing a medical power of attorney representative; the POST form is a current medical order giving emergency responders and hospital staff specific instructions they can act on immediately. Emergency medical services personnel are trained to look for a POST form and follow it on the spot, and they generally cannot act on a living will in the field. The two documents work together, and West Virginia law requires the POST form to note whether you have an existing advance directive, guardian, or surrogate.
If You Travel Out of State
POST and POLST programs are state-specific, and there is no federal law requiring one state to honor another state’s form. Only forms developed and approved by a given state are considered valid there. If you split time between states or travel often, ask your provider whether the destination state has its own POLST-type program and whether you need a separate form completed by a provider licensed there. Carrying a copy of your West Virginia POST form can still help out-of-state providers understand your wishes, even if they are not legally bound to follow it.