MAY 27, 2002 VOLUME 9, NUMBER 48
One way to help assure that you will not receive unwanted medical care is to sign an advance medical directive. Every U.S. state now recognizes health care powers of attorney (sometimes called health care proxies) or living wills. Nearly all states recognize both types of documents. Often, however, the decision whether to initiate or continue life-sustaining medical treatment must be made for patients who have signed no documents at all.
Most states now permit family members to make some—or even all—health care decisions for patients who have not signed advance directives. Sometimes those powers are limited; in Arizona, for instance, family members do not have the inherent power to refuse or remove feeding tubes.
When patients have not signed any kind of advance directive, however, the likelihood increases that an unhappy result will occur. Take the case of Engracia Torregosa Garcia as an example.
Ms. Garcia experienced cardiac arrest in July of last year. Although she was resuscitated she had suffered irreversible brain damage, and she fell into a chronic vegetative state. Doctors agreed that there was no hope of recovery, but Ms. Garcia could be kept alive for months or years on a feeding tube.
Because there was no prospect for improvement Ms. Garcia was transferred to hospice. Her mother, brothers and sisters immediately objected to her care in hospice, though, because the feeding tube was removed. The case ended up in court in Tennessee, where Ms. Garcia was being treated.
Nearly four months after her accident the trial court ruled that Ms. Garcia’s feeding tube could not be removed. State law permits anyone to sign an advance directive authorizing withdrawal or withholding of a feeding tube. The judge reasoned, however, that the same law prohibits removal of a feeding tube from a patient who never got around to signing any directive.
In the course of the proceedings the court had appointed an attorney to represent Ms. Garcia, and her attorney and the hospice program both appealed. The Tennessee Court of Appeals reversed the trial judge’s holding, and authorized the removal of her feeding tube. The evidence was clear, ruled the Court of Appeals, that Ms. Garcia would not have wanted to be kept alive in her current condition; the Tennessee legislature did not have the power to compel her to accept treatment just because she had not signed a particular form in advance. Juan-Torregosa v. Garcia, May 7, 2002.
The result in Ms. Garcia’s case would probably strike most people as correct. As is often the case with stories reported in Elder Law Issues, however, that result was not reached without considerable expense and delay—which could have been avoided with proper planning.
