SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — State Rep. Debbie Meyers-Martin, D-Matteson, has advanced a bill out of the House Health Care Availability & Accessibility Committee to streamline the process of designating an emergency contact for hospital patients and for notifying these contacts of changes in the patient’s condition.

“When a person experiences a medical crisis, one of the most important things, beyond preserving the health of the patient, is ensuring that the patient’s loved ones are informed of important developments in their condition,” Meyers-Martin said. “When a patient’s family member arrives at the hospital only to suddenly be told that their loved one’s condition is not what they were led to believe, that’s not right. We owe both our patients and their families a system that does better than that.”

Meyers-Martin’s House Bill 1332 requires that whenever a hospital licensed under Illinois’ Hospital Licensing Act admits a person for inpatient care, that this patient be provided with an opportunity to designate an emergency contact. If the patient chooses to do so, the bill would require that the hospital reach out to this emergency contact to ask how and when they wish to be notified of significant changes in the patient’s condition, including death—whether immediately over the phone, in person at the hospital, or by some other method.

Meyers-Martin filed the bill in response to incidents in which families were told to come to the hospital to see their loved one, only to be told on arrival that the loved one had passed away.

“We have to remember that the fundamental goal of healthcare is, in a way, keeping families intact and patients in the lives of their loved ones,” Meyers-Martin said. “Of course, that happy ending isn’t always possible. But when it’s not, we still have a responsibility to the patient to inform their loved ones in a caring and respectful manner and to those loved ones to be a source of comfort, not of confusion, in an already difficult time. This legislation simply facilitates the improved communication which I believe is crucial to that goal.”