I attended the Consortium for Idahoans with Disabilities meeting this morning. I’ve missed the last few because I’ve had other scheduling conflicts, but it was good to catch up on what’s going on around the state. I also ended up volunteering to help the SILC and Medicaid with resubmitting a Money Follows the Person grant proposal. Just what I needed, more work! Of course, this is all contingent upon Medicaid being willing to assume the project. Personally, I think that they should submit the grant and then contract out the MFP project to a state partner like the SILC, the DD Council, Co-Ad, or the CDHD. This all depends upon Medicaid being willing to relinquish some control…
Jim Baugh also talked about the medical consent statutes in Idaho. Evidently there are some people with disabilities who have shown up for surgeries or other procedures requiring anesthesia, and have been turned away because the doctor or a nurse felt that they were not “competent” to provide consent. Currently, Idaho’s medical consent statutes say that only “persons of ordinary intelligence” can provide consent. So it leaves a lot of room to interpret what is meant by ordinary intelligence and who is qualified to determine when a person fall below this “ordinary intelligence” threshold. For what it’s worth, it would seem that some of this is outlined in the guardianship laws of Idaho.
The same medical statutes also state that a surgeon doesn’t have to provide a procedure if the surgeon deems the procedure as “futile”. This is another slippery slope to debate…what is futile? When does a person’s quality of life render any medical intervention as “futile”? There’s one to chew on for a while…
Anyway, it appears that this is going to be an upcoming issue for the next legislative session, although I would imagine that the medical lobby will be out in full force to protect the rights of physicians’ and nurses’ professional judgment. It’s a very complex issue, but one that should be of concern to everyone. I’m not sure that I would like an anonymous surgeon deciding that a medical intervention that could potentially save my life is futile…that’s a decision that me or my family should be allowed to make. It’s also another reason to have an advanced medical directive in place so you’ve already made the decision before the crisis.
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