HFMA.org – Dec. 22, 2008.
The right of federally funded healthcare providers to decline to participate in services to which they object has been affirmed in a final rule issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and published in the Federal Register.
The final rule clarifies that non-discrimination protections apply to institutional healthcare providers as well as to individual employees working for recipients of certain funds from HHS; requires recipients of certain HHS funds to certify their compliance with laws protecting provider conscience rights; and designates the HHS Office for Civil Rights as the entity to receive complaints of discrimination addressed by the existing statutes and the regulation. Click title to read more…
In the preamble to the final rule, HHS encourages providers to engage their patients early on in ?full, open, and honest conversations? to disclose what services they do and do not provide. While it would strengthen provider conscience rights, the rule does not restrict healthcare providers from performing any legal service or procedure. If a procedure is legal, a patient will still have the ability to access that service from a medical professional or institution that offers it.
The rule takes effect 30 days after its publication date of Dec. 19, 2008. Read the final rule.
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