POLST Bill to Get Hearing in House on March 18

March 17, 2022

The House Health Finance and Policy Committee is expected to hear a bill on March 18 that would create an advisory group to study and recommend how to initiate a statewide registry for Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) forms. This is one of the MMA’s top legislative priorities for the session.  

MMA President Randy Rice, MD, is planning to testify in support of the bill, HF3360 (Rep. Kelly Morrison, MD, -DFL, Deephaven), which calls for the recommendation to be due to the Legislature in February 2023.  

If passed, the bill will likely be laid over for possible inclusion in the House health omnibus bill. The bill has not been heard in the Senate yet. 

POLST forms are a portable medical order that can offer patients with an advanced serious illness the option to exercise personal control over the treatment they want and do not want to receive at the end of life. POLST forms are the preferred practice for end-of-life care as recommended by the Institute of Medicine and have been recognized by hospitals, long-term care facilities, medical professionals and EMS in Minnesota for more than 10 years. 

Immediate access to end-of-life treatment information is especially important during medical emergencies. However, emergency responders might not have access to the physical copies of a patient’s POLST form. HF3360 would task the advisory group with studying the implementation of a statewide electronic registry of patients’ POLST forms so emergency services could access a patient’s POLST form anywhere.