HB408: AN ACT relating to patient-directed care at the end of life.

Legislative Summary

Create new sections of KRS Chapter 311 to define terms; establish a qualified terminally ill patient's right to voluntarily request medication to self-administer to cause death; establish conditions required to make request; permit patient to rescind request at any time; permit an attending physician to provide medication; establish requirements for attending physician to inform patients and document request; require disposal of unused medications; establish residency requirements for qualified patients; require report by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services; establish provisions for contracts, insurance policies, and beneficiaries; prohibit applicability of provisions to ending a patient's life by lethal injection, mercy killing, or active euthanasia; establish that a health care provider is not required to provide medication to a qualified patient; permit health care providers to prohibit persons or entities from participating in a qualified patient's request during or on the premises of employment; prohibit reporting a health care provider to a licensing board for participating in a qualified patient's request; state that actions under this Act do not authorize lethal injection, mercy killing or active euthanasia; establish that actions under this Act do not constitute suicide or homicide; create a form for a qualified patient to make a request; create a form for an interpreter for a qualified patient making a request; create a new section of Subtitle 12 of KRS Chapter 304 to establish provisions for insurance policies and beneficiaries of qualified patients; amend KRS 507.020 and 507.030 to create an affirmative defense to a charge of murder and manslaughter in the first degree; provide that the Act may be cited as the Kentucky Death with Dignity Act.