Medical Society of New York Fights Palliative Care Information Act Despite Mounting Evidence

The ink of Governor Paterson’s signature is barely dry on New York’s Palliative Care Information Act (PCIA), drafted and sponsored by Compassion & Choices and its New York affiliate, yet evidence mounts daily for its vast and dramatic impact on end-of-life care. I predict this bill will shift decision-making authority radically from physicians to patients, and dwarf the impact of the Oregon and Washington Death with Dignity bills that, themselves, sent tremors through Medicine over the last thirteen years.

The PCIA merely instructs physicians to discuss a prognosis with seriously ill patients and ask if they would like information on hospice, palliative care and appropriate end-of-life options. But this simple requirement runs counter to an endemic medical culture that keeps prognoses secret and imposes painful, intensive technology on uninformed, dying patients.

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