Home Health & Hospice Week

Oregon's assisted suicide law hasn't changed much for hospices in that state, according to a new study. "Individual hospice programs generally assume a minor role in the decision-making process of patients who exercise their rights to physicianassisted death," says a study in the September- October issue of The Hastings Report. Hospices' roles are "largely confined to providing information about the law in a 'neutral' manner," says the article in the journal about bioethics.

"Moreover, hospices claim they will not assist with providing the medications necessary to hasten a patient's death," notes the study by Oregon State University researchers.

Twenty-five percent of the hospices surveyed did not participate in the law at all, notes the study. Twenty-seven percent had limited participation -- when patients asked about physician-assisted death a staff member referred them to the attending physician without any conversation. 

All of the hospices prohibited staff from helping patients obtain and take medications to end their lives, the survey found. Few of the programs had a policy allowing staff to be with patients when they took life-ending medication.

While hospices don't participate very actively in the law, over the last two years about 95 percent of patients using the assisted suicide option were enrolled in hospice, the study notes. The study's abstract is at www.thehastingscenter.org/Publications/HCR/Detail.aspx?id=4859.