Status of Medical Aid in Dying

Medical aid in dying is currently authorized in Hawai‘i. Legislation to improve the Our Care, Our Choice Act (OCOCA) passed and was signed by Governor Josh Green on June 2, 2023. Improvements to the law include: 

• Adding Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) with prescriptive authority in the definitions of attending and consulting providers and psychiatric nurse practitioners in the definition of counseling providers, in alignment with their scope of practice.
• Allowing APRNs to participate as providers under the Our Care, Our Choice Act helps address the disparity in access to participating providers, particularly in rural areas and on the neighboring islands.
• Reducing the minimum 20-day waiting period between the first and second oral requests to five days.
• If a patient meets the qualifications for medical aid in dying and is unlikely to survive the mandatory waiting period, the attending provider may waive the mandatory waiting period. Two of the largest healthcare systems found that a significant number of eligible patients die in exactly the way they do not want to during the mandatory minimum waiting period. This bill will allow a qualified patient’s attending provider to waive the waiting period if, in their medical judgment, the patient is unlikely to survive that waiting period.