Legal review: The Patient Self-Determination Act--"Miranda" rights in health care.

Abstract

The Patient Self-Determination Act should help patients make their own health care decisions without the intervention of the courts. Health care providers will acquire a large responsibility for helping to educate the public concerning the availability and use of advance directives. It is hoped that the additional investment providers will make in administering the provisions of the Act will bear dividends in better informed patients and in loss of time and suffering avoided when health care decisions are required for incapacitated patients.