Family sues UCSF for agreeing, then refusing to help woman die

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/17/family-sues-ucsf-for-agreeing-then-refusing-to-help-woman-die/

In what may be the first-of-its-kind lawsuit related to California’s End of Life Option Act, the family of a San Francisco terminally ill cancer patient is suing the UC San Francisco Medical Center alleging that her physician and the system misrepresented that they would help the dying woman use California’s right-to-die law when her time came.

Instead, according to the July 7 civil lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Judy Dale’s wish for a peaceful death through the state’s new aid-in-dying law was denied to her by the defendants’ “conscious choice to suppress and conceal’’ their decision that they would not participate in the law, despite her repeated requests to doctors and social workers throughout last summer that she intended to have a peaceful death via aid-in-dying. The suit also names the university’s Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, UCSF Health, a UCSF oncologist and the UC Board of Regents.

UCSF declined Monday to comment on the matter.

The 17-page lawsuit alleges that Dale “repeatedly requested” the reassurance of UCSF doctors and social workers that they would participate in the end of life law, “which they gave her over and over.’’ On Aug. 18, the suit says, Dale “was shocked to learn from her UCSF social worker’’ that her doctors had decided to deny any eligible patient who requested aid in dying, “notwithstanding their many prior representations that they would provide it.’’

After caring for the 78-year-old Dale as an inpatient throughout the summer of 2016, UCSF discharged Dale to her home to die without their assistance, the lawsuit says.

That set in motion “an urgent, panic-filled search for a physician who would be willing’’ to help her fulfill the process required by the End of Life Option Act, and obtain a prescription for the lethal medication in time to use it.

According to the lawsuit, Dale’s frenzied search occurred even though UCSF’s website says, “if you doctor does not feel comfortable using the act, your social worker will assist you in finding a doctor who has agreed to participate in the act.”

California’s legislation, which was enacted on June 9, 2016, requires that patients must be at least 18 years old and mentally competent to make health care decisions — and that the lethal medication be self-administered. Two physicians must confirm a prognosis of six months or less to live, and a written and two oral requests must be made at least 15 days apart.​

But by the end of August, when Dale made contact with a willing Berkeley-based doctor who agreed to work with her, the clock started running over again on the statutorily mandated 15 day waiting period, the suit says, and it was too late for Dale.

Every day until her death on Sept. 13, according to the lawsuit, Dale repeatedly asked her daughters if it was the day she could obtain the aid in dying medication, but the 15-day waiting period had not yet expired.

“Her daughters had to tell their mother that she could not yet have the medication which would enable her to achieve a peaceful death as she wished,’’ the lawsuit says.

Dale died one day shy of the 15th day, “precisely the way she did not want to die, in bed, in a diaper, bleeding from her rectum and urinary tract, too confused by pain medications needed to manage the excruciating pain of terminal colorectal cancer to say goodbye,’’ the lawsuit says.

Filed on behalf of Dale’s two adult daughters by plaintiff’s attorneys Kathryn Stebner and Deena Zacharin,

the lawsuit alleges elder abuse and neglect; negligent infliction of emotional distress; misrepresentation/fraud and negligence.

It also demands a jury trial and seeks unspecified general, special and punitive damages.

Filed under: General Problems