OCR Provides Technical Assistance to the State of Arizona to Ensure Crisis Standards of Care Protect Against Age and Disability Discrimination
As a result of this work, Arizona has issued an updated CSC plan that incorporates the prohibition of categorical exclusion criteria, the use of a patient's long-term life expectancy and the use of resource-intensity and duration of need as criteria for the allocation or re-allocation of scarce medical resources. The updated plan also incorporates the inclusion of reasonable modifications to the use of clinical instruments for assessing likelihood of short-term survival when necessary for accurate use with patients with underlying disabilities, new protections against providers "steering" patients into agreeing to the withdrawal or withhold life-sustaining treatment, and language ensuring that long-term ventilator users will be protected from having a ventilator they bring with them into a hospital setting taken from them to be given to someone else.
