Advance Care Planning

Thaddeus Mason Pope (Associate Professor of Law, Widener University Law School – Health Law Institute) recently published his article entitled Legal Briefing: Advance Care Planning, 20 J. of Clinical Ethics 362 (2009). The abstract available on SSRN is below:

The “Legal Briefing” column in this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics covers legal developments pertaining to advance care planning (ACP). Not only has this topic been the subject of recent articles in this journal, but it also been the subject of numerous public and professional discussions over the past several months. The national debate over healthcare reform has focused significant attention on how people can and should make decisions about medical care at the end of life. Consequently, ACP has recently had an unusually high profile in legislative and regulatory halls across the United States.

Legal developments concerning ACP can be usefully grouped into six categories: (1) general healthcare decisions statutes, (2) statutes mandating compliance with advance directives in long-term care facilities, (3) “right-to-know” informed consent laws, (4) advance directive registries, (5) POLST (Physician’s Order on Life Sustaining Treatment) laws, and (6) laws mandating insurance coverage for ACP.