On June 27, the California Department of Public Health issued its first data report on residents’ participation in the new End of Life Option Act.
The law was signed by the governor in 2015 and took effect on June 9, 2016. The report reveals that 258 terminally ill California patients—diagnosed as having less than 6 months to live—started the process as called for under the law, as of Dec. 31, 2016.
Of those 258 patients, 191 were prescribed the life-ending medications, by 173 unique physicians. The report states: “111 patients, or 58.1 percent, were reported by their physician to have died following ingestion of aid-in-dying drugs prescribed under EOLA, while 21 individuals, or 11 percent, died without ingestion of the prescribed aid-in-dying drug(s). The outcome of the remaining 59 individuals, or 30.9 percent, who have been prescribed aid-in-dying drugs, is currently undetermined, as there has been no outcome reported for these individuals within the time period covered by this report.” (Full disclosure: One of the 111 patients who passed away using the new law was my mother-in-law; see “Annette’s Story,” posted at CVIndependent.com on Dec. 20, 2016.)
Kat West is the national director of policy and programs at Compassion and Choices, a national support organization for medical aid-in-dying patients and their cause. The organization just released its own, independent report on the law, covering activity through May 31 of this year.
“We were actually very encouraged by the data that came out of the state, because it showed that (the participation rate) was in keeping with our previous experience in the other authorized states,” West said. “The one piece of data we were very happy to see was the ratio of the number of different doctors prescribing the drugs compared to the group of patients requesting. That was a really good indicator that medical aid-in-dying is being what we call “normalized” and basically mainstreamed into end-of-life care.”
According to the Compassion and Choices report, the organization knows of 313 prescriptions that were written for medical aid in dying in the first five months of 2017. Meanwhile, 498 health-care facilities and 104 hospice locations have adopted policies supportive of patient choice, while about 80 percent of private insurance companies have covered the cost of the medications, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter and all Medi-Cal plans.
“The additional 313 prescriptions issued (thus far in 2017) were only the ones that we know about,” West said. “There are plenty of doctors who did not reach out to our organization, and there are plenty of terminally ill people who did not reach out to us. As a result, we don’t know of all of the prescriptions that may have been written in the state of California.”
Not all of the news is good for proponents of medical aid-in-dying protocols. The federal House Appropriations Committee recently voted to block funding to implement a new medical aid-in-dying law in Washington, D.C.
In California, a Riverside County Superior Court judge allowed the Ahn vs. Hestrin lawsuit, which challenges the End of Life Option Act, to move ahead into the courts, although an injunction request to put the law on hold was rejected by the judge.
John Kappos, a partner at the O’Melveny and Myers law firm, is representing proponents of the law. He said he is not too concerned about the lawsuit.
“What I find most concerning is the fact that a purely voluntary procedure like medical aid in dying causes some people to try to impose their will on others,” he said. “People can decide that they want to do it, or they can decide that they’d prefer not to do it and just die of natural causes. There’s no one here who is telling the people who do not want to participate in medical aid in dying that they need to, or have any obligation to do so. It’s very concerning to me that there are people in California who feel that they need to tell others … they have to suffer at the end of life, and potentially die an excruciating death.”
Kappos said it could take a year or longer for the case to be resolved. “It’s hard to guess at these kinds of things, but in my view, these are purely legal issues, and eventually, that will come to light, and the case should be resolved on a motion (in the defendant’s favor).”
Here in the Coachella Valley, Eisenhower Medical Center continues to deny its staff and doctors permission to write medical-aid-in-dying prescriptions for its terminally ill patients.
“I try to take the long view, and that is that change is hard,” said West, of Compassion and Choices. “But look back 20 years as an example. If you were to bring up the subject of hospice care with a group of medical professionals, it would clear the room. That’s how taboo the topic of death and end-of-life care was then. Now, of course, hospice is completely mainstream, and everyone thinks it’s great. So it’ll be the same trajectory for medical aid in dying, especially now that California has authorized it.
“Eisenhower is just going to find itself out of step with the community’s needs and desires. It’s going to find itself out of step with its own doctors’ feelings about the issue, and eventually, it will change its policy. The community clearly wants it, so it’s just the administrators. The community is already stepping up their demands, and internal champions within Eisenhower are also calling us and letting us know what they think.”
West predicted change will come to Eisenhower sooner rather than later.
“I’d say they will change their policy within a year. I do believe that,” West said. “The administrators have to pay attention to what their community is asking for.”
West suggested that everyone engage in an end-of-life-treatment discussion with their own health-care professionals.
“Our big ask of everyone is to ask your own doctor now if they would provide the protocol legalized in the End of Life Option Act—whether she or he will support you if and when the time comes,” West said.