The case, now the subject of a federal lawsuit in Florida, is being watched by gay rights groups, which say same-sex partners often report being excluded from a patient’s room because they aren’t “real” family members.
And lawyers say the case could affect the way hospitals treat all patients with nonmarital relationships, including older people who choose not to marry, unmarried heterosexual couples and single people who rely on the support of close friends rather than relatives.
One point of contention in the lawsuit is whether a hospital has a legal duty to its patients to always give visiting rights to their designated family members and surrogates.
On the Pallimed blog, Christian Sinclair points out that in addition to discrimination, other barriers exist to good end-of-life care in hospital settings.
Many barriers to good patient-family-staff communication exist within medical facilities the greatest of which is lack of time. You add on top of that 'medical passwords for information', staff documentation, a lack of quality reimbursement structure to encourage better communication, an greater volume of clinical data and information, the loss of primary care representation in the hospital, the fractioning of physician specialists time on service, the presence of trainees, the micro-specialization of every service in the hospital, and the fact that medical staff have historically as a whole been poor communicators about the critically ill and dying patient, and you could see why lawsuits exists regarding communication.
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Palliative care teams do a great job at taking a social history and finding out who needs the information and help build trust and open channels of communication with family, patients and medical staff. But they can't be everywhere and until this issue is settled in a court of law palliative care will just have to keep doing the best when we are consulted.
In addition, there are studies showing no significant harm by allowing family members in the room during codes and trauma situations so this statement from the hospital:“The primary legal point is that the amount of visitation allowed in a trauma emergency room should be decided by the surgeons and nurses treating the patients,”doesn't necessarily hold well.
