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National Institute for Patient Rights |
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Protecting and Promoting Patient Rights |
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National Campaign for a National Patient Rights Day |
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WE NEED YOUR HELP!! Please join us in lobbying members of Congress and Senators to convince them to back the designation of a National Patient Rights Day to draw attention to the dire need for community educational programming on patient rights.
In commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA), we announced the creation of a National Institute for Patient Rights. In marking the occasion, Dr. Mark Meaney noted that December 1st, 1991 was the date that the Act went into force. The Act codified into federal law the basic rights of patient self-determination and informed consent. The PSDA remains a touchstone of a larger social and medical movement to enhance patient rights ‘at the hospital bedside.’ The Act has helped patients and their families play a greater role in patient care decisions. By encouraging patient use of advance directives, such as living wills and durable powers of attorney for health care, the Act extends patient self-determination into the period in which patients can no longer communicate for themselves. We dedicated the creation of a National Institute for Patient Rights to the protection and promotion of patient rights and the prevention of the violation of patient rights. However, despite billions spent on medical technologies, patients daily experience an erosion of their rights. Ironically, the enormous advances in medicine have contributed to the erosion. With specialist and sub-specialists for every organ, ‘component management’ has led to episodic intervention and a fragmentation of care. This has led to problems of a ‘failure to communicate’ and ‘miscommunication.’ Despite its many successes, the record on the implementation of the community education provisions of PSDA remains “abysmal.” Hospital-based healthcare professionals have neither the time nor the money to conduct community outreach on patient rights among a public who will eventually need this information. Consequently, family members or patient advocates are often left bewildered by questions about the benefits and burdens of medical technologies used on their loved ones especially at the end of life. The lack of information about patient rights no doubt contributes to conflict between family members and healthcare providers. Conflict is extremely costly! The social mission of the National Institute for Patient Rights is deliver multimedia educational programming to provide information to patients and their families in helping them to learn how to protect and promote their rights ‘at the bedside,’ without alienating their healthcare providers. As part of this mission to educate the general public, NIPR calls on the Federal Government to establish a National Patient Rights Day in calling attention to the community education provisions of the Patient Self-Determination Act. WE NEED YOUR HELP!! Please join us in lobbying members of Congress and Senators to convince them to back the designation of a National Patient Rights Day to draw attention to the dire need for community educational programming on patient rights. |
