Two months after the enactment of the Patient Right to Autonomy Act (病人自主權利法), only about 1,000 people have registered their medical wishes in the event they would be unable to communicate their preferences, the Taiwan Health Reform Foundation said yesterday.
The act, made into law on Jan. 6, grants adults the right to register advance healthcare directives (AHD), sometimes called a living will, setting medical preferences or putting another person in charge of healthcare decisions in case they are incapable of making such decisions.
People who wish to register an AHD are required to apply for and receive advance healthcare consultations at one of 77 healthcare facilities approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare before their decision is validated.
Photo: Wang Hsiu-ting, Taipei Times
Since the law’s implementation, the foundation has held 12 open lectures at senior care facilities to explain the regulation, as well as advance care planning (ACP) consulting services, it said.
At a session in Taipei yesterday, physician Hsu Li-an (許禮安) shared his clinical experience with hospice and palliative care.
“There are only two ways of dying —prepared and unprepared,” Hsu said.
Most audience members at the lectures said that they do not wish to ever receive nasogastric tube feeding, but a survey last year showed that more than 90 percent of people in long-term care facilities have been fed through a nasogastric tube, often after a decision by family members, he said.
Advance care planning simply means “making preparations for the inevitable future” and making decisions by yourself, Hsu said.
Family members are now usually asked to make decisions for their relatives, which leads to patients unwillingly receiving nasogastric tube feeding, he said, adding that some even have their arms restrained so that they cannot pull out the tube.
Only 1,076 people have registered AHDs to date, the foundation said, adding that it is both happy and concerned.
It is happy that people can finally decide in advance how they want to bid farewell to life, but also worried that many local health departments and hospitals are not yet prepared to implement the policy, it said.
About 64 percent of hospitals that provide advance care planning consulting services do not publish the cost of the service on their Web site, the foundation said, adding that 43 percent do not allow people to make appointments online and 13 percent have no information about the service on their Web site.
Although the health ministry has announced a standard service fee, the foundation urged the government to offer a subsidy and promote the policy to increase people’s willingness to register an advance healthcare decision.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400