There are several other cases across the United States involving allegations of a purported surrogate hastening a patient's death for selfish financial reasons, for example: the Van Note case in Kansas City and the Norval case in Southern California. The hospital in all these cases is probably protected from liability, unless it can be shown that its clinicians did not have a "good faith" belief in the authority of the surrogate.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Robert Lawrence v. Denver Health Medical Center: Impostor Surrogate Removes Life-Sustaining Treatment for Money
Felicia Lawrence charges that clinicians at the Denver Health Medical Center removed her father from life-sustaining medical treatment at the direction of a relative who was not authorized as surrogate decision maker. This relative apparently acted to transfer assets from the patient.
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2 comments:
There is nothing better than sevinf someone with great heart. Keep it up.
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Because the DNR Code Status and the removal of life support with the use of DNR Hospital Code Status is often very INFORMAL (intentionally?) it is possible to kill or attempt to kill someone with the DNR code status.
Unfortunately, because of the inadequate protection of the right to live and the right to die in the 1991 Patient Self Determination Act of 1991, and each individual State's interpretation of this Act, the DNR Code Status is being misused by individuals inside and outside of the health care system for reasons of fiscal expediency and personal gain.
If killing for dollars is "easy" and there is NO PROCEDURAL protection for patients and their families against unauthorized DNR status in the hospital charts, the DNR status becomes just like a gun and shortens the lives of the victims.
Why, so often, is there NO FORMAL PROCEDURE required to ensure informed consent of the patient and family to the DNR code status PLACED BY PHYSICIANS in hospital charts?
Why haven't the Bioethicists pushed for formal procedures to protect the patients from unilateral overt and covert DNR code status placed in patient's hospital charts that CAP the costs of treatment and the lack of reimbursement from CMS and the private insurers?
Why does nobody hear this "Whistle" blowing? Guess we have to follow the dollars.
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