2022 Georgia Code
Title 31 - Health
Chapter 32 - Advance Directives for Health Care
§ 31-32-12. Restriction on Requiring and Preparing Advance Directives for Health Care
- No physician, health care facility, or health care provider and no health care service plan, insurer issuing disability insurance, or self-insured employee welfare benefit plan shall require any person to execute an advance directive for health care as a condition for being insured for or receiving health care services.
- A health care facility shall only be authorized to prepare or offer to prepare an advance directive for health care if specifically requested to do so by a person desiring to execute an advance directive for health care or, if such health care facility’s offer is not coercive in nature and such person consents to such offer. For purposes of this subsection, the Department of Corrections shall not be deemed to be a health care facility.
History. Code 1981, § 31-32-12 , enacted by Ga. L. 2007, p. 133, § 2/HB 24; Ga. L. 2017, p. 164, § 57/HB 127; Ga. L. 2022, p. 611, § 2-15/HB 752.
The 2017 amendment, effective July 1, 2017, substituted “or self-insured employee welfare benefit plan” for “self-insured employee welfare benefit plan, or nonprofit hospital service plan” near the middle of subsection (a).
The 2022 amendment, effective July 1, 2022, in the first sentence in subsection (b), substituted “A health care facility shall only be authorized to” for “No health care facility shall” at the beginning, substituted “if specifically” for “unless specifically”, and added “or, if such health care facility’s offer is not coercive in nature and such person consents to such offer” at the end.
