health care decisions The right to accept or refuse medical treatment The right to make an advance health care directive Facilities must inquire as to whether the patient already has an advance health care directive, and make note of this in their medical records. Facilities must provide education to their staff and affiliates about advance health care directives. Health care providers are not allowed to discriminately admit or treat patients based on whether or not they have an advance health care directive. Purpose The purpose of the Patient Self-Determination Act was/is to inform patients of their rights regarding decisions toward their own medical care, and ensure that these rights are communicated by the health care provider. Specifically, the rights ensured are those of the patient to dictate their future care (by means such as living will or power of attorney), should they become incapacitated. The goals of the "purpose" of the Patient Self-Determination Act are/were (1) to prevent cruel over treatment of elderly/disabled Medicare/Medicaid patients for the profit motive and (2) to save money for Medicare and the private insurers in the form of the reduction of end-of-life costs for Medicare and the private insurers when elderly Medicare/Medicaid patients would ELECT/CHOOSE to refuse expensive ICU/CCU life-extending or life-saving treatments in the hospital in order to shorten their suffering unto a certain death. It was envisioned by the framers of the 1991 PSDA that the elderly/disabled on Medicare/Medicaid would die less expensively and more comfortably (out of pain) on the palliative care/Hospice Medicare Entitlement in their own personal residence or in the setting of a residential nursing home when the treating physicians consulted with them about their terminal diagnoses. References Further reading External links 1990 in law United States federal health legislation