PORT ANGELES — When Jim Leskinovitch cast a vote for non-participation in Initiative 1000 on March 4, the Olympic Medical Center Board president described it as one of the hardest decisions the board made in many years.
Three public meetings later, the six Olympic Medical Center commissioners revisited the complex Death with Dignity issue and voted 5-1 to strike a compromise that allows doctors to counsel patients on the voter-approved I-1000.
The amended resolution does not change the hospital’s original decision to prohibit the administration of lethal drugs on its premises.
“I feel very strongly about my service to the community and about my service on this board,” said Jean Hordyk, the only commissioner who opposed the amended resolution.
“But I also feel very strongly about my values.
And I’m sorry for anybody else here who doesn’t feel that way, but I personally cannot support this. I will continue to say no.”
Each board member addressed the issue after an hourlong public meeting. One position on the seven-member board is vacant.
Jim Cammack reaffirmed his original position that the final step of the act “didn’t belong in this particular hospital.”
Arlene Engel said the law affords the public with the “opportunity to follow your own values.”
“I don’t think that a house of healing should be a house of ending somebody’s life,” Engel added.
John Beitzel said he “can hardly ignore” the 61 percent of Clallam County voters who supported I-1000.
“My philosophy with regard to patient care is that we offer as many options as make sense and are legal to our patients,” he said. “We don’t force these things on them. We make them available.”
Allowing doctors to create a medical record for patients to self-administer life-ending medication — but not allowing the patient to take it on hospital property — is “a compromise I can live with,” Beitzel said.
Said John Nutter: “I don’t think we should be stepping in between a physician and their patient in mandating what the physician and the patient can or cannot talk about or what medical record they can or cannot create.
Added Leskinovitch: “We never, ever intended to get in between the doctor-patient relationship.”
He said doctors always had the option of counseling patients on I-1000 on their own time.
“So to say that we stopped it from occurring is not a correct statement, those that have made it,” he said.
“What I would propose is that we go to where the doctors can do it on our premises, to have their Death with Dignity and do the papers, but of course, no death act in the hospital or on the clinical premises.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
