People come first

EOLCNY Making News!

David Leven, Senior Advocacy Consultant and Executive Director Emeritus of End of Life Choices New York, recently responded to a NY Times article on May 5, written by Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter, emphasizing the need for doctors to have conversations with all patients over 18 years about advance care planning. The failure of doctors to have this conversation leads many people o die poorly. David’s comment was as follows:

“My Parents Are in Their Mid-80’s. Why Won’t They Prepare for the End?” (op-ed May.5) is informative and clearly illustrates the serious shortcoming of too many physicians who fail to effectively communicate with their patients about end of life planning. Too many patients die badly in the US, sometimes because they are kept alive in circumstances where they would not want to continue life sustaining treatment, but their wishes were unknown.
The federal Patient Self-Determination Act requires that hospitals and nursing homes inquire whether the patient has an advance health care directive and if not to inform them of their right to make one. While this is very important and can result in making a positive difference in what health care is provided to patients, it is often not the ideal time to begin the process. Physicians and nurse practitioners should, in their offices, be required to have discussions with patients 18 and over about the importance and benefits that advance directives provide, particularly health care proxies, and they should be paid much more than they currently are as Dr. Zitter recommends.
Until changes are made to hopefully ensure effective end of life discussions with patients, too many patients will continue to live longer but not die better or in a way that comports with their wishes.”

Health Care Proxies are for all! 

This form is accessible and simple to fill out- when can you say that about a legal form?! You can find this document in multiple languages including English, Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Italian, Korean, Russian, Yiddish, Polish, French, Bengali, Arabic, and Urdu. Please reach out if you’d like to talk through your Proxy form or if you need help finding witnesses to sign. We are here to help! Reach out at 646-580-4387 or at nathalie@eolcny.org.

Update on Medical Aid in Dying Implementation

Many of you have requested a copy of the updated law with Governor Hochul’s amendments. We are incredibly thankful to David Hoffman, JD and Robert N. Swindler, MA, JD, for putting together two documents that do just that. The first one, linked here, is the original bill language that integrates that governor’s enhanced amendments. The second one, linked here, is redlined to show the changes from the original language.

We have been able to schedule a meeting with the Department of Health, thanks to volunteer Mary Applegate, and they will be meeting with them in the next few weeks to discuss their plans for implementation and offer any support we can to ensure a smooth process on August 5, 2026. We have several questions we will hope to get answered but if you have additional questions, feel free to email Mandi. We cannot guarantee that we will have time to ask everything but we are hopeful that this is the beginning of a conversation and we will have more opportunities in the near future.

We continue to speak to patients who are interested in considering medical aid in dying and have already begun connecting them to physicians to pre-plan as much as they can which receiving quality care. We have also been able to connect patients with family members of people who used medical aid in dying in other states, so they can begin to learn what the process was generally like (although it will be slightly different in each state) and ask questions that only family and friends who be able to answer. We are honored to be able to coordinate this part of the process. If you are in need, please reach out to us! If you are a clinician of any sort (doctor, nurse, social worker, chaplain, volunteer, doula, or hospital/hospice system), please complete this survey. The answers to this survey will not be made public but will allow us to reach out to you to offer you the opportunity to connect with patients based on their needs. This survey has informed us already that we have strong interest from all sorts of clinicians in providing this care, including pharmacists, doctors, psychologists and end of life doulas.

Please continue to share the flyer highlighting our partnership with the Academy of Aid-in-Dying Medicine with anyone you think could benefit from resources and education. Together with The Academy, we are your go-to source for all things related to the implementation of excellent aid-in-dying care. Please reach out to us with questions, concerns and needs.

If you learn of trainings in your community, please forward them to us so we can reach out and let them know about the support we can provide. We are thrilled that we have been seeing trainings popping up and we want to support any organization to provide the best quality care possible.

We continue to receive many requests by major media outlets to interview people who are considering this option when it becomes available. This is an important way we can use the media to bring more awareness about this option. If you have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and will likely be eligible to use medical aid in dying in the next 6-12 months, and you’d be willing to talk to the media either in print or on TV, please let me know. I can put you in touch with very sensitive reporters and producers who want to help share your story in a compassionate and dignified manner.