SB 1002, as amended, Monning. End of Life Option Act: telephone number.
The End of Life Option Act, as enacted in thebegin delete 2015-16 Secondend deletebegin insert 2015-16 2ndend insert Extraordinary Session of the Legislature, authorizes, until January 1, 2026, an adult who meets certain qualifications, and who has been determined by his or her attending physician to be suffering from a terminal disease, as defined, to make a request for a drug prescribed pursuant to the act for the purpose of ending his or her life through self-administration of the drug. The act establishes certain procedures for making a request, prohibits certain agreements or policies from being conditioned upon or affected by a request, and provides immunity from civil or criminal liability, with exceptions, to persons present when
the qualified individual self-administers the drug or to persons preparing the drug. The act provides that action taken in accordance with the act shall not constitute, among other things, suicide or homicide.
The act requires physicians to submit specified forms and information to the State Department of Public Health after writing a prescription for an aid-in-dying drug and after the death of an individual who requested an aid-in-dying drug. The act authorizes the Medical Board of California to update those forms. The act requires the State Department of Public Health to publish the forms on its Internet Web site, collect and review certain information, annually create a statistical report of the information collected, as specified, and post that report on its Internet Web site.
This bill would require thebegin delete department to establish and maintain a toll-free telephone number for the purpose of receiving and responding to inquiries regarding the End of Life Option Act, and post the telephone number on the department’s Internet Web site. This bill would require the telephone number to operate during the regular business
hours of the department and be available to the public.end deletebegin insert department, on or before January 1, 2017, to post a toll-free telephone number on its Internet Web site for the purpose of receiving and responding to inquiries in multiple languages regarding the End of Life Option Act, as specified.end insert
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes. State-mandated local program: no.
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
Section 443.19 of the Health and Safety Code,
2as added by Section 1 of Chapter 1 of thebegin delete Statutes of 2015,end delete Second
3Extraordinarybegin delete Session,end deletebegin insert Session of the Statutes of 2015,end insert is amended
4 to read:
(a) The State Department of Public Health shall collect
6and review the information submitted pursuant to Section 443.9.
7The information collected shall be confidential and shall be
8collected in a manner that protects the privacy of the patient, the
9patient’s family, and any medical provider or pharmacist involved
10with the patient under the provisions of this part. The information
11shall not be disclosed, discoverable, or compelled to be produced
12in any civil, criminal, administrative, or other proceeding.
13(b) On or before July 1, 2017, and each year thereafter, based
14on the information collected in the previous year, the department
15shall create a report with the information
collected from the
16attending physician followup form and post that report to its
17Internet Web site. The report shall include, but not be limited to,
18all of the following based on the information that is provided to
19the department and on the department’s access to vital statistics:
P3 1(1) The number of people for whom an aid-in-dying prescription
2was written.
3(2) The number of known individuals who died each year for
4whom aid-in-dying prescriptions were written, and the cause of
5death of those individuals.
6(3) For the period commencing January 1, 2016, to and including
7the previous year, cumulatively, the total number of aid-in-dying
8prescriptions written, the number of people who died due to use
9of aid-in-dying
drugs, and the number of those people who died
10who were enrolled in hospice or other palliative care programs at
11the time of death.
12(4) The number of known deaths in California from using
13aid-in-dying drugs per 10,000 deaths in California.
14(5) The number of physicians who wrote prescriptions for
15aid-in-dying drugs.
16(6) Of people who died due to using an aid-in-dying drug,
17demographic percentages organized by the following
18characteristics:
19(A) Age at death.
20(B) Education level.
21(C) Race.
22(D) Sex.
23(E) Type of insurance, including whether or not they had
24insurance.
25(F) Underlying illness.
26(c) The State Department of Public Health shall make available
27the attending physician checklist and compliance form, the
28consulting physician compliance form, and the attending physician
29followup form, as described in Section 443.22, by posting them
30on its Internet Web site.
31(d) The State Department of Public Health shall establish and
32maintain a toll-free telephone number for the purpose of receiving
33and responding to inquiries regarding the End of Life Option Act.
34The department shall post the telephone number on its Internet
35Web site. The telephone number shall operate during the regular
36business hours of the department and be available to the public.
37
(d) On or before January 1, 2017, the State Department of
38Public Health shall post a toll-free telephone number on its Internet
39Web site for the purpose of receiving and responding to inquiries
40in multiple languages regarding the End of Life Option Act. The
P4 1toll-free telephone number may be an existing telephone number
2staffed by the department or an existing telephone number of
3another department with an existing consumer assistance telephone
4line. The telephone line shall have a protocol for responding to
5callers in crisis.
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