Aid-in-Dying May Be Legalized in 7 More States

Compassion & Choices is engaged in "seven dynamic state-based campaigns" to legalize aid-in-dying. 

1.  Massachusetts, where we could pass a law to fulfill the promise of last year’s ballot measure. We have majority support and an army of motivated citizen activists behind our efforts

2.  Vermont, where I can report that the Senate approved an aid-in-dying bill just last week! Now we must rally grassroots support behind Patient Choices Vermont to help them get it through the House and to the governor, who has promised to sign it.

3.  New Jersey, where our staff is building support for a strong bill that made it out of committee and is set for a full Assembly vote very soon. Similar legislation is before the state Senate as well.

4.  Connecticut, where an aid-in-dying bill will likely have its first committee hearing in March. State-based staff and volunteers are busy throughout the state building critical coalitions and preparing citizens to show legislators their support.

5.  New Mexico, where we seek a legal ruling that the state’s statute against “assisting suicide” does not cover the medical practice of aid in dying. Such a ruling would allow us to safely weave that medical practice into the healthcare expectations of New Mexicans and the standard of care practiced by supportive doctors.

6.  Montana, where we are currently fighting to stop a bill in the legislature that would send doctors to prison if they provide aid in dying to their terminally ill patients who request it.

7.  Hawaii, where we continue to expand our work to make aid in dying legally accessible to terminally ill patients and define it as a medical practice governed by broadly accepted medical standards of care.

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Texas Advance Directives Act - Five New Bills

As of a few days ago, there were just two bills proposing amendments to the Texas Advance Directives Act.  Now there are seven.  



In the past two days, the following were introduced:  H.B.1444 (King); H.B.1455 (Kilck); H.B.1464 (Hughes); H.B.1539 (Perry); and S.B. 675 (Hancock).  The Hughes and Perry bills, on a quick first read, appear to be the most dramatic limitations or eliminations of clinicians' current right to refuse life-sustaining treatment.  

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AABHL Conference 2013

The Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law (AABHL) is Australia and New Zealand’s leading organisation concerned with issues of bioethics and health law.  Its annual conference will be July 11 to 14, at the University of Sydney.  Judging by the 2011 AABHL conference that I attended, this should be a most valuable and enjoyable meeting.

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Resuscitated Despite POLST

A hearing before a Washington State Senate Committee yesterday revealed that, without immunity, healthcare providers are reluctant to comply with POLST and resuscitate residents contrary to their wishes.    



Washington probably should provide immunity for good faith compliance with POLST.  But even if the absence of such immunity, it is probably legally safer to comply with the POLST than to ignore the POLST.   In this in-progress article, I am trying to show that administering unwanted life-sustaining treatment is not a legally safe approach.

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2013 Health Law Scholars Workshop - CFP

The Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University and the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME) have announced the 2013 Health Law Scholars Workshop.  If you are a junior law professor in health law, you really should do this. 



The Health Law Scholars Workshop is a collegial forum in which junior faculty who are new to health law and bioethics scholarship present works-in-progress and receive in-depth advice from experienced scholars and teachers in the field of health law and bioethics.  The workshop encourages health and bioethics scholarship, fosters the professional development of emerging scholars and furthers the sense of community among health law academics. Past scholars have placed their papers for publication in preeminent law journals.



Scholars workshop their work-in-progress before a group of experienced peer reviewers and commentators. Each author’s work-in-progress accepted for the Health Law Scholars 

Workshop will be read in advance by several faculty members in relevant fields. D uring the workshop weekend, each author presents his or her paper to the full group. After extensive oral 

feedback from the readers, the floor is opened for a sustained exchange between the presenter and full group. The workshop draws health law and bioethics scholars from across the country, inviting senior faculty from a variety of law schools and disciplines to review the works-in-progress and participate in the weekend.



APRIL 1 Submission of Abstracts for Consideration

MAY 17 Notification of Selection of Workshop Scholars

SEPT. 3 Works-in-Progress Due

OCT. 10-12  Scholars Weekend

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Robert Lawrence v. Denver Health Medical Center: Impostor Surrogate Removes Life-Sustaining Treatment for Money

Felicia Lawrence charges that clinicians at the Denver Health Medical Center removed her father from life-sustaining medical treatment at the direction of a relative who was not authorized as surrogate decision maker.  This relative apparently acted to transfer assets from the patient.  

There are several other cases across the United States involving allegations of a purported surrogate hastening a patient's death for selfish financial reasons, for example: the Van Note case in Kansas City and the Norval case in Southern California.  The hospital in all these cases is probably protected from liability, unless it can be shown that its clinicians did not have a "good faith" belief in the authority of the surrogate.

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Advanced Life Extending Technologies in DC, MD, VA

The MedStar Washington Hospital Center is hosting the Annual DC, MD, VA (DMV) Regional Hospital Clinical Ethics Conference on March 29, 2013:  "Advanced Life Extending Technologies in the District, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) Region."





Description



This CME accredited one-day conference on clinical ethics is focused on hospital clinicians and other professionals throughout the DC, MD, and VA (DMV) metropolitan region. Most hospitals have ethics committees made up of physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, clinical ethicists and other clinicians and administrators who address the clinical ethics needs of their own institution. This one day annual meeting brings together members of these hospital ethics committees and other health professionals to 1) establish a regional network of hospital professionals dedicated to elevating the quality of clinical care within each institution, 2) to work together to develop solutions to common ethical problems and 3) to determine whether such a network will improve the ethical quality of healthcare. show less



Objectives

• Design a self-education program for their hospital’s ethics committee to assure that all members are able to identify the values uncertainty or conflict issues as well as barriers to improving EOL care in their own hospital.


• Evaluate the current EOL education programs at each institution and design an evidence-based educational intervention to address the EOL clinical ethics education needs of its own clinicians.


• The ability to help physicians and patients recognize the need for upstream EOL discussions and for ethics committee members to be able to lead and/or participate in such discussion with patients, families, and the medical team.


• Evaluate the hospital’s policies that have explicit EOL ethics implications and either create or revise the policies to improve EOL practices.

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