When the Arizona legislature adjourned its annual session in May, it had considered hundreds of proposed laws and adopted dozens. Few of those approved will have much particular effect on older residents or those with disabilities, but there are a handful of exceptions.

One interesting experiment endorsed by the legislature might make it easier for Arizonans to control the kind of medical care they receive at the end of life. Like most other states Arizona has long recognized the validity of "living wills" and health care powers of attorney. Either document can provide a mechanism for withdrawing life-sustaining treatment such as artificial feeding or hydration, and a single instrument combining both documents can be especially effective. As a practical matter it is often difficult to locate a patient’s current health care directive, or to get a copy to the hospital, physician or nursing home when it is needed.

Chapter 219 of this year’s new laws aims to make it easier to find and circulate advance directives. The Secretary of State is authorized to maintain a "health care directives registry," and to receive directives for filing with the agency. Once filed, a website link will make it easy for health providers to see a patient’s health care directives.

To preserve confidentiality, the actual documents will only be available to someone who knows the file number and password for an individual. Although the patient will still need to keep information available, a health care provider should only need the number and password.

It is not yet clear how much the Secretary of State will charge to maintain an advance directive in its registry, exactly how the system will work, or indeed whether it can even be set up at all. If the legislative idea works, though, it should make it much easier for Arizonans to use the health care directives they have signed.

Other new laws adopted by the legislature will:

  -substantially rewrite state limits on the use of funds held in some Special Needs Trusts (chapter 225)

  -clarify and expand on some of the changes to privacy rights imposed by federal law last year with the adoption of HIPAA—the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (chapter 191)

  -double the exemption from property tax liability available to low-income widows and widowers (chapter 329)

  -give great-grandparents the same preferential treatment given to grandparents in adoption proceedings (chapter 169)

  -restrict the ability of Arizonans to establish guardianship over non-citizen minors (chapter 171)

All of the new laws described here become effective on August 25, 2004.

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