Good morning Mr. Chairman and members, my name is Jennifer Allmon and I am the associate director of the Texas Catholic Conference. The TCC is the statewide association of the 15 Roman Catholic dioceses in our state and it is our responsibility to advocate for the public policy positions of the active Bishops of Texas.

The Texas Catholic Conference has worked on advance directives reform in Texas since at least 1997.  We have repeatedly attempted to support legislation that respects autonomy and human dignity, both for patients and providers.  That being said, the primary issue here is not the number of days for transfer.  The issue is the whole process, and what can be discontinued, including assisted nutrition and hydration, and other potentially proportionate beneficial treatment.

The bottom line is that this revision, while possibly allowing a family to find other providers to agree with its wishes, may also be making a bad situation worse.  The Bishops and the legislature accepted a flawed compromise in 1999 to settle a heated controversy in the middle of a difficult session. The stakes are too high to get it wrong again.

The Texas Catholic Conference supports:

• Including nutrition and hydration as ordinary care, unless they cannot reasonably be expected to prolong life or when they would be excessively burdensome for the patient;
• Providing better and more compassionate communication to the family when there is a disagreement between the physician and family over treatment, including a review of the ethics committee composition;
• Extending the period of time of transfer to beyond the current ten days, but with a firm deadline rather than requiring treatment pending transfer when an ethics committee agrees with the physician that continued medically inappropriate treatments and interventions should be discontinued; and
• Reinforcing and continuing the rights of licensed providers not to provide medically inappropriate treatment.