Choose your own Visitor

[lightcastle]

In a shocking display of good judgment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued new rules for Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals that protect patients’ right to choose their own visitors during a hospital stay.

And yes, that included same-sex partners. It includes anyone. If you, as a patient, want someone to visit you, they have to have full and equal access to visit you as anyone else. The only reason to deny you a visit should be clinical. The rules will go into effect in about 2 months.

From the press release:

"Basic human rights—such as your ability to choose your own support system in a time of need—must not be checked at the door of America’s hospitals," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Today’s rules help give 'full and equal' rights to all of us to choose whom we want by our bedside when we are sick, and override any objection by a hospital or staffer who may disagree with us for any non-clinical reason."

[...]

"These rules put non-clinical decisions about who can visit a patient out of the hands of those who deliver care and into the hands of those who receive it," said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD, MPP. "While we still have miles to go in making care more patient-centered, these rules make it easier for hospitals to deliver on some of the fundamental tenets of patient-centered care—care that recognizes and respects the patient as an individual with unique needs, who treated with dignity and granted the power of informed choice."

Comments

[metawidget]

Yay, CMS. I really like this approach — a maximally-flexible "let the patient decide" approach rather than adding another category or two of recognized relationships. I only hope that there's some equally sensible rule for uncommunicative patients.

[lightcastle]

I like the "let the patient decide" approach, too.
Uncommunicative has to default to known next-of-kin, I guess.