The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown much of what we take for granted on its head. If recent reports are accurate we can potentially add to that list an individual’s right to control their own medical treatment as codified in the Health Care Consent Act (the “HCCA”).
There have been reports in the news recently about advanced planning currently underway about what would happen to the provision of health care if the worst case scenario for COVID-19 should occur and the hospitals are overwhelmed. Included amongst these reports are discussions that certain provisions of the HCCA may temporarily be suspended as part of a new triage system which would allow medical professionals to prioritize who received treatment.
Section 10 of the HCCA codifies that a health care practitioner shall not carry out any “treatment” for a patient unless the patient, or someone authorized on behalf of the patient, has consented to the treatment. The Supreme Court of Canada in Cuthbertson v. Rasouli, 2013 SCC 53, confirmed that “treatment” included the right not to be removed from life support without the patient’s consent even if health practitioners believed that keeping the patient on life support was not in the patient’s best interest. In coming to such a decision the Supreme Court of Canada notes:
“The patient’s autonomy interest — the right to decide what happens to one’s body and one’s life — has historically been viewed as trumping all other interests, including what physicians may think is in the patient’s best interests.”
The proposed changes to the HCCA would appear to be in direct contradiction to the spirit of this statement, allowing health care practitioners to potentially determine treatment without a patient’s consent based off of the triage criteria that may be developed. This “treatment” could potentially include whether to keep a patient on a lifesaving ventilator.
Hopefully the recent downward trend for COVID-19 cases holds and the discussion about any changes to the HCCA remains purely academic. If not however, and changes are made to the HCCA which could remove the requirement to obtain a patient’s consent before implementing “treatment”, you can be certain that litigation would follow. If this should occur it will be interesting to see how the court reconciles any changes to the HCCA with the historic jurisprudence, for as Rasouli notes beginning at paragraph 18 many of the rights that were codified in the HCCA previously existed under the common law, such that any changes to the HCCA alone may not necessarily take these rights away for a patient.
Thank you for reading.