End-of-life Education

New law raises debate

I shouldn’t be surprised when doctors object to laws telling them how to practice medicine, as does New York State’s new Palliative Care Information Act — not surprised, but in this instance, distressed.

Vehemently opposed by the Medical Society of the State of New York, the law passed last summer by a two-thirds majority of the Legislature and took effect in February. The legislation was written in collaboration with Compassion and Choices of New York, an organization that advocates for informed choices and greater physical and emotional comfort at the end of life.

The act, which I discussed in this column last August, states that when patients are found to have a terminal illness or condition, health care practitioners must offer to provide information and counseling about appropriate palliative care and end-of-life options. Patients or their surrogates are entirely at liberty to refuse an offer to discuss these options.

California passed a similar law in 2009, and other states are considering them. These measures promise to reduce the cost of care at the end of life, as well as the suffering often associated with it; palliative care is meant to reduce the severity of disease symptoms, pain and stress. 

This quote, from a New York Times article, brings to light a battle currently being fought across the U.S. While many doctors do voluntarily share end-of-life care information with their patients, a disturbing amount still fail to have this conversation until it's too late to make a choice. While the doctor's society is officially protesting the fact that they are "forced" to have these talks, few are willing to argue the fact information about palliative and hospice care is often glossed over or ignored when it would be in the patient's best interest to be informed.