71st OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--2001 Regular Session
NOTE: Matter within { + braces and plus signs + } in an
amended section is new. Matter within { - braces and minus
signs - } is existing law to be omitted. New sections are within
{ + braces and plus signs + } .
LC 3274
Senate Bill 781
Sponsored by Senator BROWN
SUMMARY
The following summary is not prepared by the sponsors of the
measure and is not a part of the body thereof subject to
consideration by the Legislative Assembly. It is an editor's
brief statement of the essential features of the measure as
introduced.
Creates definition of capable for certain advance patient
instructions.
A BILL FOR AN ACT
Relating to advance expressions of patients' instructions;
amending ORS 97.950 and 127.505.
Be It Enacted by the People of the State of Oregon:
SECTION 1. ORS 127.505 is amended to read:
127.505. As used in ORS 127.505 to 127.660 and 127.995:
(1) 'Adult' means an individual who is 18 years of age or
older, who has been adjudicated an emancipated minor or who is
married.
(2) 'Advance directive' means a document that contains a health
care instruction or a power of attorney for health care.
(3) 'Appointment' means a power of attorney for health care,
letters of guardianship or a court order appointing a health care
representative.
(4) 'Artificially administered nutrition and hydration ' means
a medical intervention to provide food and water by tube,
mechanical device or other medically assisted method. '
Artificially administered nutrition and hydration' does not
include the usual and typical provision of nutrition and
hydration, such as the provision of nutrition and hydration by
cup, hand, bottle, drinking straw or eating utensil.
(5) 'Attending physician' means the physician who has primary
responsibility for the care and treatment of the principal.
(6) 'Attorney-in-fact' means an adult appointed to make health
care decisions for a principal under a power of attorney for
health care, and includes an alternative attorney-in-fact.
{ + (7) 'Capable' means that in the opinion of the court in a
proceeding to appoint or confirm authority of a health care
representative, or in the opinion of the principal's attending
physician, a principal has the ability to make and communicate
health care decisions to health care providers, including
communication through persons familiar with the principal's
manner of communicating if those persons are available. + }
{ + ' Incapable ' means not capable. + }
{ - (7) - } { + (8) + } 'Health care' means diagnosis,
treatment or care of disease, injury and congenital or
degenerative conditions, including the use, maintenance,
withdrawal or withholding of life-sustaining procedures and the
use, maintenance, withdrawal or withholding of artificially
administered nutrition and hydration.
{ - (8) - } { + (9) + } 'Health care decision' means
consent, refusal of consent or withholding or withdrawal of
consent to health care, and includes decisions relating to
admission to or discharge from a health care facility.
{ - (9) - } { + (10) + } 'Health care facility' means a
health care facility as defined in ORS 442.015, a domiciliary
care facility as defined in ORS 443.205, a residential facility
as defined in ORS 443.400, an adult foster home as defined in ORS
443.705 or a hospice program as defined in ORS 443.850.
{ - (10) - } { + (11) + } 'Health care instruction' or
'instruction ' means a document executed by a principal to
indicate the principal's instructions regarding health care
decisions.
{ - (11) - } { + (12) + } 'Health care provider' means a
person licensed, certified or otherwise authorized or permitted
by the law of this state to administer health care in the
ordinary course of business or practice of a profession, and
includes a health care facility.
{ - (12) - } { + (13) + } 'Health care representative'
means:
(a) An attorney-in-fact;
(b) A person who has authority to make health care decisions
for a principal under the provisions of ORS 127.635 (2) or (3);
or
(c) A guardian or other person, appointed by a court to make
health care decisions for a principal.
{ - (13) 'Incapable' means that in the opinion of the court
in a proceeding to appoint or confirm authority of a health care
representative, or in the opinion of the principal's attending
physician, a principal lacks the ability to make and communicate
health care decisions to health care providers, including
communication through persons familiar with the principal's
manner of communicating if those persons are available. 'Capable'
means not incapable. - }
(14) 'Instrument' means an advance directive, acceptance,
disqualification, withdrawal, court order, court appointment or
other document governing health care decisions.
(15) 'Life support' means life-sustaining procedures.
(16) 'Life-sustaining procedure' means any medical procedure,
pharmaceutical, medical device or medical intervention that
maintains life by sustaining, restoring or supplanting a vital
function. 'Life-sustaining procedure' does not include routine
care necessary to sustain patient cleanliness and comfort.
(17) 'Medically confirmed' means the medical opinion of the
attending physician has been confirmed by a second physician who
has examined the patient and who has clinical privileges or
expertise with respect to the condition to be confirmed.
(18) 'Permanently unconscious' means completely lacking an
awareness of self and external environment, with no reasonable
possibility of a return to a conscious state, and that condition
has been medically confirmed by a neurological specialist who is
an expert in the examination of unresponsive individuals.
(19) 'Physician' means an individual licensed to practice
medicine by the Board of Medical Examiners for the State of
Oregon.
(20) 'Power of attorney for health care' means a power of
attorney document that authorizes an attorney-in-fact to make
health care decisions for the principal when the principal is
incapable.
(21) 'Principal' means:
(a) An adult who has executed an advance directive;
(b) A person of any age who has a health care representative;
(c) A person for whom a health care representative is sought;
or
(d) A person being evaluated for capability who will have a
health care representative if the person is determined to be
incapable.
(22) 'Terminal condition' means a health condition in which
death is imminent irrespective of treatment, and where the
application of life-sustaining procedures or the artificial
administration of nutrition and hydration serves only to postpone
the moment of death of the principal.
(23) 'Tube feeding' means artificially administered nutrition
and hydration.
SECTION 2. ORS 97.950 is amended to read:
97.950. As used in ORS 97.950 to 97.964:
(1) 'Anatomical gift' means a donation of all or part of a
human body to take effect upon or after death.
(2) 'Capable' has the meaning given in ORS 127.505
{ - (13) - } .
(3) 'Decedent' means an individual who is dead as defined under
ORS 432.300. 'Decedent' includes a stillborn infant or fetus.
(4) 'Document of anatomical gift' means a driver license or
identification card endorsed with an appropriate code, a will, an
advance directive or other signed document used to make an
anatomical gift.
(5) 'Donor' means an individual who makes an anatomical gift of
all or part of that individual's body.
(6) 'Enucleator' means a licensed embalmer, apprentice embalmer
or eye bank technician that has completed a course in eye
enucleation and has a certificate of competence from an agency or
organization designated by the Board of Medical Examiners for the
purpose of providing the training.
(7) 'Hospital' means a facility licensed, accredited or
approved as a hospital under the laws of any state or a facility
operated as a hospital by the United States Government, a state
or a subdivision of a state.
(8) 'Identification card' means the card described in ORS
807.400 or a comparable provision of the motor vehicle laws of
another state.
(9) 'Part' means an organ or part thereof, tissue, eye or part
thereof, bone, artery, blood, fluid or other portion of a human
body.
(10) 'Physician' means an individual licensed or otherwise
authorized to practice medicine under the laws of any state.
(11) 'Procurement organization' means an agency licensed,
accredited or approved under the laws of any state for the
acceptance, procurement, distribution or storage of human bodies
or parts.
(12) 'Technician' means an individual who is employed and
authorized by a procurement organization to remove or process a
part.
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