With the enforcement of the current Act since last February, a statement declaring an intention with respect to termination of life-sustaining treatment and the use of a hospice can be made in advance in preparation for the time when a decision can’t be made even though there is no chance of being revived.

As of July, 2018, 11,528 persons terminated their life-sustaining treatment through the system of deciding on life-sustaining treatment for patients at the end of life. Besides, 86 registration agencies throughout the country received applications for an advance statement on life-sustaining treatment, resulting in 34,974 persons being registered on the life-sustaining treatment information processing system.

Meanwhile, out of the 11,528 persons who determined to terminate life-sustaining treatment, the majority have been forced to do so, such as through the patient’s family statement (28.5%) and the patient family’s unanimous consensus; the case where patients terminated such treatment out of his/her own free will turned out to be only 34.9%, representing an advance statement on life-sustaining treatment (0.6%) and life-sustaining treatment plan (34.3%), respectively.

Accordingly, the Amendment aims to designate public medical institutions as an agency for registration of the advance statements on life-sustaining treatment to increase the access of such statement, which is relatively low in usage, and thus allow for submission of the statement through the homepage of the registration agency or by email, while at the same time prohibiting a medical institution that has an ethics committee or is deemed to have it from refusing without justifiable reasons the request for hospitalization of a patient or his/her family who decided to terminate life-sustaining treatment, thereby seeking stable establishment of a system for deciding on life-sustaining treatment for patients at the end of life (Article 11-1, Article 12-1, Article 14, subparagraph 2 and Article 40-1, subparagraph 1-2 newly inserted).

Require an advance statement on life-sustaining treatment to be prepared and then submitted to the registration institution (Article 12)

Prohibit the head or an employee of a medical institution that has an ethics committee or is deemed to have it pursuant to Article 14-5 from refusing without justifiable reasons the request for hospitalization of a patient or his/her family who decided to terminate life-sustaining treatment and want its decision to be implemented (Article 14, subparagraph 2)