8mm
Posted on 05/15/2007 11:06:24 PM PDT by monomaniac
Austin, TX (LifeNews.com) -- The Texas state Senate has approved a bill that would revise a law that allows families just 10 days to find care for a loved one when a medical facility refuses to provide continued lifesaving medical treatment. Under the measure, families would get a minimum of 21 days to locate a medical facility that will care for the patient.
Current state law allows medical facilities to determine that a patient is too far gone to receive further care and they can tell families that they will stop lifesaving medical treatment in 10 days.
Pro-life groups and disability rights advocates have fought the law saying it promotes euthanasia and puts families in a difficult position.
Although lawmakers are keen on improving the law, pro-life groups and legislators were split on two bills -- one upping the 10 day window and another providing an indefinite period of time to placed a loved one somewhere else.
Lawmakers eventually compromised on the bills as Sen. Bob Deuell and House Public Health Chair Dianne Delisi worked middle ground between their measures.
"This has been a very difficult bill to deal with," Duell told the Dallas Morning News. "There's value in each and every life. As a physician, I can tell you no person is the same when they have a disease."
Two pro-life groups -- Texas Right to Life and Texas Alliance for Life -- disagreed on which bill was better, but TRTL came around to support the compromise when additional safeguards were added.
Those provisions will ensure that patients similar to Terri Schiavo who are marked "futile" by hospital ethics committees can continue to receive food and water while the family searchers for another medical facility.
The compromise bill also provides for a liaison to help families locate medical care when a hospital refuses to provide it.
Texas Right To Life director Elizabeth Graham told the newspaper that her group is now satisfied that are is "comfortable that [the bill] no longer weakens the current law."
The two lawmakers are said they are seeking funding to place additional beds for futile care patients in Texas nursing homes to provide a safe haven during the transfer time period.
The compromise bill now heads to the state House for its consideration.
After previously opposing the measure eight months ago, the Texas Hospital Association and Texas Medical Association are planning to tell a committee today that they support the change allowing more time as long as the law isn't scrapped entirely.
During a hearing on the Duell bill Lanore Dixon, who battled with St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital over the fate of her sister Andrew Clark represents many families who have had problems with the futile care provision.
"This law allowed a hospital to steal precious time from our family during a loved one's end days," she said, according to the Houston Chronicle. "Was that really necessary?"
Clark, 54, suffered complications following open heart surgery and required a ventilator and dialysis to survive. Her motor control faculties were damaged but, her family says her cognitive abilities were unaffected.
The hospital informed her family that her medical care would be discontinued in 10 days after a hospital committee decided Clark's condition was beyond hope and refused further medical treatment.
It took legal action from a family attorney to prevent Clark's treatment from being withheld, in an act of euthanasia.
Cynthia Deason, who took Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital to court to stop it from taking her disabled daughter off life support added, "I just don't want anybody else to go through what I've gone through."
Related web sites: Texas Right to Life - http://www.texasrighttolife.com Yexas Alliance for Life - http://www.texasallianceforlife.org
A couple of years’ hard work resulted in a few hours of meetings in the Lt. Governor’s office. That old cliche’ is true: It’s unsettling to see sausage and law in the making.
I hope I’m wrong, but the trouble is the number of people who were potentially gutted to provide the casings for this particular sausage.
For one thing, some of the interested parties weren’t even consulted, since one particular group acted in what the Senator called “ an attempt to demagogue,” and “hold members of this Legislation political hostages.” They also left some of their allies out of the negotiations. (Note the highlighting of some quotes by the original poster.)
I expect to see the docs who continue to admit to the ICU going away for procedural courses, learning to place tracheostomies, permanent feeding tubes, and shunts for dialysis. I know I’m going to either brush up on my vent settings and bedside dialysis knowledge - or change my hospital privileges to no ICU. Currently, the neurologists no longer practice in our local hospital, and I may have trouble getting hold of some of the other specialists, now.
I expect to deal with a few lawyers if it becomes necessary to follow my medical judgment and conscience. I’m afraid that the new amendments to the law may be interpreted to force doctors to provide care that they deem inappropriate - to intentionally act in ways they deem wrong - indefinitely.
There will definitely be more judges and court-appointed guardians.
As I said in another thread,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1828049/posts (post 69), no one can order a surgeon to sign on to a case and perform as directed when none of the doctors perform the procedures the family is demanding. Who are you going to impress into service?
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It sounds like a big improvement over the earlier version.
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