Measure would clarify authority in end-of-life

A bill proponents say will improve the chances that someone's end-of-life care wishes are followed will be heard today in the Senate Health and Human Services Standing Committee.

"It promotes thoughtful advance health-care planning," said Maureen Henry, executive director of the Utah Commission on Aging, who helped craft the proposed advance-directive form. "It clarifies the authority of decisionmakers, providers and facilities and spells out more clearly who gets to make decisions when no designee is available."

The Advance Health Care Directive Act takes the three forms now used in Utah and turns them into a single form, naming the decisionmaker and outlining the individual's wishes on the same document. Advocates of the bill say it will increase the likelihood that wishes are followed.

SB75 "tries to make more clear what the laws are," said the bill sponsor, Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden. "There's some vague parts in there and some lapses in the law."

Current law is unclear on who has final say in end-of-life care decisions, he said, and the bill seeks to clarify that and what happens afterward.

It also specifies that having authority to make health-care decisions or to make financial decisions is not interchangeable, although the same person could be chosen for both roles. And it says someone making medical decisions does not have the right to limit social contacts. Feuding siblings or in-laws who disagree on care cannot bar each other from seeing a patient, for instance.

None of the provisions apply unless the patient is unable to speak for himself, and it wouldn't go into effect until 2008.

Some disputes might still end up in court, "where they should be resolved if there's no other way to agree," Henry said. It would not have solved all the problems presented in the well-publicized case of Terri Schiavo, subject of a court battle between her parents and her husband over use of a feeding tube.

The admittedly complex bill has pages of definitions. The form itself starts on line 804, and the bulk details how that form is to be administered. "If we simplify the bill, we complicate the process. At least this way, we put the answers into the law so that people don't have to resort to the court every time there's a question," said Henry.

It does contain ample room to write in clarifications, changes and limitations, if an individual wants.

The bill will be discussed at 8 a.m. in W020 at the Capitol.

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Contributing: Angie Welling

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E-MAIL: lois@desnews.com