President Barack Obama’s April memorandum ordering hospitals to ensure visitation rights for same-sex partners will radically change how the vast majority of U.S. healthcare institutions currently treat gay and lesbian patients, a new study finds.
According to a report released Monday by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 93% of health care facilities surveyed currently lack comprehensive nondiscrimination policies for LGBT patients. Forty-two percent of hospitals do not include sexual orientation in patient’s bill of rights language.
Such disparity can lead to disastrous consequences, as was the high-profile case of Lisa Pond, who died in 2007 of a brain aneurysm at a Miami hospital while vacationing with her partner of 18 years, Janice Langbehn, and their adopted children. Langbehn sued Jackson Memorial Hospital after officials barred her and the couple’s children from visiting Pond as she lay dying in a trauma unit.
A federal judge dismissed the suit in September, ruling, “Decisions as to visitation must be left to the medical personnel in charge of the patient, without second-guessing by juries and courts.”
Obama’s April memo directed Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to issue new rules within 180 days for LGBT patients and their families at any facility receiving government funding through Medicare and Medicaid — the vast majority of health care facilities in the United States.
The new rules should “respect the rights of patients to designate visitors,” according to the memo, and bar discrimination on the basis of gender identity as well as sexual orientation. Appropriate guidelines would also respect advance directives, including powers of attorney, for patients with same-sex partners.
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