Bill > SB356

This bill establishes the Designated Health Care Decision-Maker Act, which creates a comprehensive framework for making health care decisions for incapacitated patients who do not have an existing legal guardian or power of attorney. The legislation defines an ordered hierarchy of individuals who can serve as health care decision-makers, starting with the patient's spouse and moving through adult children, parents, siblings, grandparents, and other relatives, with specific provisions for prioritizing and disqualifying potential decision-makers. The bill provides detailed guidelines for how these designated decision-makers should approach medical choices, emphasizing that they must always act in the patient's best interests and attempt to understand the patient's previously expressed medical preferences. The act includes important protections, such as preventing decision-makers from intentionally hastening a patient's death, allowing healthcare providers to transfer patients if they cannot comply with a decision due to moral or religious convictions, and ensuring that decisions are not made in a discriminatory manner based on age, disability, or perceived quality of life. The legislation also establishes specific rules about providing or withholding nutrition and hydration, requires good faith efforts to determine a patient's capacity and preferences, and explicitly states that it does not authorize euthanasia or deliberate acts to end a person's life.

Health and Social Services

https://www.senate.mo.gov/25info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?SessionType=R&BillID=386