SENATE HEALTH, HUMAN SERVICES AND SENIOR CITIZENS COMMITTEE

STATEMENT TO

SENATE, No. 3118

with committee amendments

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

DATED:  MAY 13, 2019

      The Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee reports favorably and with committee amendments Senate Bill No. 3118.

      As amended by the committee, this bill requires the Commissioner of Health to establish a public awareness campaign designed to foster community-wide discussions and to promote early conversations about advance care planning and patient preferences to improve decision-making about end-of-life care.  

      The public awareness campaign would seek to educate the general public on how to effectively have early advance care planning conversations with family members, friends, caregivers, healthcare providers, and other individuals involved in one’s care, regarding personal end-of-life care and treatment preferences. The campaign will include information concerning specific aspects of end-of-life care, including the use of advanced directives and Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) forms, and the differences between palliative care, hospice care, comfort care, and other forms of end-of-life care.

      The public awareness campaign is to disseminate information in an ethnically, culturally, and linguistically sensitive way that uses a variety of languages. In implementing the campaign, the commissioner is to partner with, and expand upon, existing community-based initiatives that educate the public on advance care planning and end-of-life care.

COMMITTEE AMENDMENTS:

      The committee amended the bill to make certain technical and grammatical corrections.