California enacts Terminal Patients’ Right to Know End-of-Life Options Act

On September 30, 2008, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 2747 which is claimed to be the country’s first law requiring doctors to provide terminally ill patients with full disclosure and counseling about their end-of-life care options.

The Legislative Counsel’s Digest explains:

This bill would provide that when a health care provider, as defined, makes a diagnosis that a patient has a terminal illness, the health care provider shall, upon the patient’s request, provide the patient with comprehensive information and counseling regarding legal end-of-life options, as specified, and provide for the referral or transfer of a patient, as provided, if the patient’s health care provider does not wish to comply with the patient’s request for information on end-of-life options.

The end-of-life options under Health & Safety Code 442.5 include:

• Hospice care at home or in a health care setting.
• A prognosis with and without the continuation of disease-targeted treatment.
• The patient’s right to refusal of or withdrawal from life-sustaining treatment.
• The patient’s right to continue to pursue disease-targeted treatment, with or without concurrent palliative care.
• The patient’s right to comprehensive pain and symptom management at the end of life, including, but not limited to, adequate pain medication, treatment of nausea, palliative chemotherapy, relief of shortness of breath and fatigue, and other clinical treatments useful when a patient is actively dying.
• The patient’s right to give individual health care instruction * * * [with a] written health care instruction, such as an advance health care directive, and the patient’s right to appoint a legally recognized health care decisionmaker.