Florida expands advance directive laws
The Florida legislature last session passed a bill changing the state’s law on advance directives. Previously, the law allowed for directives withholding or withdrawing life-prolonging procedures for terminal patients or patients in a persistent vegetative state. The new provision includes patients with end-stage conditions.
Florida law defines an end-stage condition as "a condition caused by injury, disease, or illness which has resulted in severe and permanent deterioration, indicated by incapacity and complete physical dependency and for which, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, treatment of the irreversible condition would be medically ineffective."
The problem with the change in the law lies in the ambiguous use of the term end-stage,’ says Joel Mattison, MD, physician adviser at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa. "We are already using this [term] as an official adjectival modifier of such diseases as [end-stage] renal disease and [end-stage] COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]."
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