Virginia's Statewide Advance Health Care Directive Registry to Go Live on February 17, 2010

It has taken almost two years to become effective, but reportedly Virginia's statewide Advance Health Care Directive Registry will begin to go live after being approved in the 2008 session of the Virginia General Assembly. The Registry will be fully operational by this year’s National Health Care Decisions Day on April 16, 2010. Amazingly, Virginia will be only the tenth state in the nation that offers its residents an Advance Directive Registry. The Registry will provide a means whereby health care providers can access health care directives anywhere in the state regardless of an individual/couple's sexual orientation. Here is how Equality Virginia describes this development:
*
Del. Dave Englin and Sen. George Barker introduced legislation to create the statewide Advance Health Care Directive Registry in 2008. With EVA's strong support, this bill passed the General Assembly almost unanimously before being signed by the Governor. The bill mandated creation of a state database where all Virginians can upload their Advance Health Care Directives in order to make them accessible to hospital administrators if the patient is incapacitated or does not have the paper copies readily available.
*
The Registry will help ensure that health care providers will have easy access to the documents that make a patient’s health care wishes known, avoiding conflicts that can arise among and between loved ones when such documents are not in the hands of those providing treatment. The Registry law was effective on July 1, 2008, and the process for defining regulations and procedures for implementing this new online database has been moving along since then.
*
At a recent meeting, the companies engaged to create the Registry made a presentation outlining how the Registry will work and announced that the registry will be “live” for individuals on February 17, 2010, institutions on March 17, 2010 and will be fully operational by this year’s National Health Care Decisions Day on April 16, 2010.
*
The temporary state regulations can be found here as extended here. As soon as final regulations and a website address are available, I will post updated information.