President Obama Cites NC Policy as Model for Federal Hospital Visitation Rules
4/16/2010 - Yesterday, President Obama ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that same-sex partners and others are able to visit their loved ones in hospitals across the country. The memo quotes the hospital visitation provision of the North Carolina Hospital Patients' Bill of Rights which Equality NC proposed and got adopted by the state in 2008.
"We are thrilled to see that Equality NC's work at the state level has provided a model which the President is now taking nationwide to ensure that hospital patients get the care and companionship they deserve," said Ian Palmquist, Executive Director.
The Presidential Memorandum signed yesterday states:
Many States have taken steps to try to put an end to these problems. North Carolina recently amended its Patients' Bill of Rights to give each patient "the right to designate visitors who shall receive the same visitation privileges as the patient's immediate family members, regardless of whether the visitors are legally related to the patient" — a right that applies in every hospital in the State. Delaware, Nebraska, and Minnesota have adopted similar laws.
Equality NC proposed the addition of this provision to the Patients' Bill of Rights for hospitals and worked with the Medical Care Commission to get it adopted in April, 2008.
The Presidential Memorandum requires Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to begin the process of adopting rules that require every hospital that accepts Medicare or Medicaid — nearly every hospital in the country — to adopt visitation policies similar to that we have in place in North Carolina and to study other ways to ensure LGBT people get fair and equal access to health care.
"This demonstrates once again that work we're doing on the ground at the state and local level is having an impact beyond our borders," Palmquist said. "Change flows up from the states, not down from Washington, DC."
