NJ A2846

Department of Health critical health care resource allocation policies must comply with federal civil rights laws including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Americans with Disabilities Act, Affordable Care Act Section 1557, and Age Discrimination Act of 1975

Prohibits excluding or deprioritizing individuals from receiving health care resources based on disability status or because a disability may require additional, more intensive, or longer-term use of resources

Bans factoring long-term survivability into treatment decisions and prohibits reallocating personal ventilators from individuals who use them daily to other patients deemed more likely to benefit

Requires hospitals to modify Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores so patients with underlying health conditions are not penalized when those conditions are unrelated to hospital survival or treatment efficacy

Prohibits hospitals and nursing homes from issuing blanket do-not-resuscitate orders applying to all patients; DNR policies must account for individual patient preferences through advance directives or POLST forms