Sponsors (7)
The bill would make advance care planning and end-of-life care more standardized, interoperable, and better supported—improving patient access and clinician readiness—but at the risk of legal conflicts with state laws, privacy and cost burdens, and many benefits arriving slowly or needing further action to take effect.
Patients (seniors and people with chronic conditions) will have more reliable access to and portability of their advance directives across providers and care settings because the bill pushes for interoperability standards and prominent EHR fields for advance care planning documents.
Clinicians and hospitals will gain centralized resources, training tools, and expanded role definitions that increase palliative and end-of-life care training, improving the quality of care for dying patients.
Patients and families (especially seniors and those with serious illness) will receive broader public education through a national awareness campaign, increasing knowledge of advance care planning rights and options.
State governments, providers, and patients face legal uncertainty because federal definitions, an optional nationwide form, and portability efforts could conflict with diverse state advance directive laws.
Creating interoperable systems and any nationwide registry or standardized exchange for advance directives raises meaningful privacy and data‑security risks if not narrowly constrained and aligned with HIPAA and state laws.
Implementing interoperable portable directives, EHR certification changes, training expansions, and potential oversight will impose significant costs on providers, vendors, states, and the federal government that could increase taxpayer burdens.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Directs a national public education campaign on advance care planning and requires federal studies, standards work, and demonstrations to improve portability and EHR interoperability of advance directives.
Official title: To improve end-of-life care.
Introduced August 3, 2026 by Nanette Barragán · Last progress August 3, 2026
Creates a national framework to promote advance care planning, increase public education about end-of-life care options, and study technical and legal barriers to making advance directives portable and interoperable. It directs HHS to run a multi-year national education campaign operational by January 1, 2027, and requires multiple HHS, GAO, and ONC studies and demonstrations on uniform forms, registries, EHR standards, and electronic signatures for advance directives. The bill mostly expresses policy preferences and funds no specific new entitlement; it sets timelines for reports to Congress, defines key terms related to advance directives and end-of-life care, and directs demonstrations and standards work to improve usability, portability, and adherence to patient preferences across Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP providers.