Presidential memorandum allows patients to designate visitors, surrogate decision makers

Action would recognize visitation rights of same-sex partners.

Yesterday, President Obama issued a memorandum to the Secretary of Health and Human Services asking that a rule be established that would require hospitals to respect the rights of patients to receive anyone designated as a visitor, as well as designated surrogate decision makers for medical emergencies.

Traditionally, hospitals only allow visitation to patients for immediate family members. This new action would allow patients to designate visitors.

Visitation cannot be denied on the basis of “race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.” But the memo does draw the distinction that visitation can be restricted in “medically appropriate circumstances.”

In the memo, President Obama wrote, “Often, a widow or widower with no children is denied the support and comfort of a good friend. Members of religious orders are sometimes unable to choose someone other than an immediate family member to visit them and make medical decisions on their behalf. Also uniquely affected are gay and lesbian Americans who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives — unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated.”

Requiring all hospitals who participate in Medicare or Medicaid to respect patient visitation wishes would mean that moving forward, doctors and nurses will have access to “the best information” about a patient. Under the current system, “all too often people are made to suffer or even to pass away alone, denied the comfort of companionship in their final moments…,” according to the memo.

Some states — Delaware, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Minnesota —already have similar laws.

Many of us who have treated terminally ill patients who have had 'significant others' that were prevented from being involved in their loved one's final days must be pleased by this executive order.

- Harry S. Jacob, MD

HemOnc Today Chief Medical Edi