No. HB 369
Filed under Healthcare.
Patient-directed Medical Orders; Authorizes execution of patient-directed medical order for specified purpose; provides requirements for valid patient-directed medical orders; authorizes use of telehealth for specified purpose; requires that certain health care services be provided to principal regardless of decision to withhold or withdraw life-prolonging procedures; authorizes physicians, physician assistants, & advanced practice registered nurses to withhold or withdraw life-prolonging procedures without penalty; requires AHCA to create & update database for storage of patient-directed medical orders.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDA new 'patient-directed medical order' lets a patient work with a physician, physician assistant, or advanced practice registered nurse to say in advance whether to withhold or continue life-prolonging treatment, portable across care settings.
Regardless of that decision, the law now requires comfort and pain-relief care to continue. Providers who withhold or withdraw treatment under a valid order face no discipline, prosecution, or civil liability for doing so.
That immunity and withholding authority, previously tied mostly to CPR and physicians, now extends to any life-prolonging procedure and to physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses, across hospitals, hospice, home health, and more.
Elsewhere, the definition of required palliative-care assurances shifts from mandatory to optional, and AHCA must build a voluntary electronic registry so these orders can be found across care settings.
AIA patient may execute a new type of order, made with a physician, physician assistant, or advanced practice registered nurse, directing health care providers and facilities on treatment preferences in advance of incapacity.
AINo matter what the patient's order says about life-prolonging procedures, the provider must still supply the health care services needed for comfort and pain relief.
AIProvisions letting staff withhold or withdraw treatment under a do-not-resuscitate order, without discipline, prosecution, or civil liability, are broadened from cardiopulmonary resuscitation alone to any life-prolonging procedure, and repeated with the same broadened wording across hospitals, home health agencies, hospices, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, adult family-care homes, and EMS.
AIA do-not-resuscitate or patient-directed medical order form can be validly signed by a physician assistant or advanced practice registered nurse, not only by a physician as before.
AIThe statutory list of what palliative care must guarantee -- including honoring treatment preferences, dignity, non-abandonment, and respecting advance directives -- is rewritten from a mandatory list into an optional one.
AIThe agency must create and maintain an electronic database to store patient-directed medical orders, but a patient decides whether their own order is stored there at all.
AIThese facility types are added to the legal definition used throughout chapter 765, which brings them under the same advance-directive and patient-directed-order rules that already apply to hospitals and nursing homes.
AIThe conversation a patient must have with a physician, physician assistant, or advanced practice registered nurse before completing a patient-directed medical order no longer has to happen in person.