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Institutional Efforts to Promote Advance Care Planning in Nursing Homes: Challenges and Opportunities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Elizabeth H. Bradley ,
Barbara B. Blechner ,
Leslie C. Walker  and
Terrie T. Wetle
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Extract

During the past two decades, several reports have documented substantial support from clinicians, policy-makers, and the general public for the use of advance directives, yet studies continue to find that only a minority of individuals (10 to 25 percent) have completed these legal documents. Advance directives are written instructions, such as living wills or durable powers of attorney for health care, which describe an individual's medical treatment wishes in the event that individual becomes incapacitated in the future. The completion and use of advance directives is one of several components of the broader activity of advance care planning, that is, the overall planning and communication of personal wishes concerning future medical care.

In December 1991, the federal Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) became effective. Promoted as a federal initiative to enhance an individual's control over medical treatment decision making and, therefore, patient autonomy and self-determination, PSDA placed several new requirements on health care organizations receiving Medicare or Medicaid payments.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 25 , Issue 2-3 , Summer Fall 1997 , pp. 150 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1997

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References

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