Send your Pro-Life message to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission right now, urging the commission to strengthen proposed rules on Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders (SB 11 from the First Called Special Session of the 85th Texas Legislature).
Last year, YOU stood with Texas Right to Life in the state Capitol to require patient consent for Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) Orders. Texas law was silent on the rights of patients when physicians issued DNR orders, enabling hospitals to operate under their own patchwork of policies. While serving as patient advocates around the state, Texas Right to Life discovered many hospitals and physicians ignored basic patient rights by authorizing secret and forced DNR orders on patients without their knowledge, or in some cases, against the expressed wishes of patients or their surrogates. Through the herculean efforts of Pro-Life legislators and citizens, like you, Senate Bill 11 passed in 2017, requiring patient or surrogate consent for DNR orders (except in rare cases).
In the rules-making process, the rights of patients to make their own life and death medical decisions addressed by SB 11 are being undermined at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). HHSC released proposed rules for implementing and enforcing the DNR mandate and is now accepting public comment on the proposed rules. Pro-Life Texans have a limited amount of time to send public comments to HHSC.
The proposed rules are a slap in the face of Pro-Life citizens, like you, who demanded a strong life-saving law.
The proposed rules entirely gut the Pro-Life DNR law and return all authority to hospitals, completely undermining the intent of the law. The proposed rules do not even state that patient consent is required before a DNR is placed in the medical files/records of patients, which was the primary intent of the law.
Complete the form below to tell HHSC to rewrite the proposed rules that negate the Pro-Life DNR law!