Bill > A1493

Introduced Session

This bill would permit an emergency medical technician (EMT), mobile intensive care paramedic, or investigator for the county medical examiner's office to make the determination and pronouncement of death under certain circumstances. The bill provides that where there has been an apparent death as described in the bill, an EMT, paramedic, or investigator for the county medical examiner's office may make the actual determination and pronouncement of death and is to attest to this pronouncement by: signing in the space designated for this signature on the certificate of death under R.S.26:6-7; or, for the purposes of the New Jersey Electronic Death Registration System, transmitting orally or in writing a report of the pronouncement to the attending, covering, or resident physician, or the county medical examiner. The provisions of this bill would only apply: --in the case of an apparent death that occurs in the home or place of residence of the deceased, or at the scene of a motor vehicle accident, homicide, fire, flood, or other natural or man-made disaster or emergency; --when there is no physician or registered professional nurse present who is qualified by law to make the actual determination and pronouncement of death in that setting; and --when the person who is declared to be presumptively dead exhibits one or more of the following signs of death: decapitation, decomposition, lividity, an absence of electrical activity in the heart, or rigor mortis. The bill takes effect on the first day of the seventh month after enactment, but authorizes the Commissioner of Health to take prior administrative action in advance as necessary for its implementation.

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Paul Moriarty (D)*, 

Introduced, Referred to Assembly Health Committee (on 01/14/2020)