Meeting/Event Information

You are cordially invited to join the Hawai'i Association of Healthcare Risk Management (HAHRM) for an educational session exploring how medical aid in dying (MAiD) laws have evolved across the western United States, and what they mean for healthcare organizations, clinicians, and the patients and families we serve.

Medical Aid in Dying Across the West: From Oregon to California to Hawai'i

Date: Thursday, November 19, 2026

Time: 12:00 p.m. HST / 2:00 p.m. PST

About the Session

We will begin with the anatomy of the law that started it all, Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, and follow its path to California's End of Life Option Act and Hawai'i's Our Care, Our Choice Act (OCOCA), codified at HRS Chapter 327L. In effect since January 1, 2019, OCOCA permits eligible adults to access medical aid in dying. To qualify, a patient must be terminally ill with a prognosis of six months or less, be 18 or older, be a Hawai'i resident, and be found competent to make informed health care decisions by a licensed mental health provider. The Act requires consultation with three health care providers, and it was amended in 2023 to allow APRNs to serve as attending providers and to shorten the waiting period.

From a risk management and patient relations perspective, OCOCA raises important considerations: provider participation is strictly voluntary and providers may opt out, participating providers must submit DOH-required forms for annual reporting, and patients are not required to inform family members of their decision.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Trace the development of medical aid in dying legislation, beginning with Oregon's Death with Dignity Act and continuing through California's End of Life Option Act and Hawai'i's Our Care, Our Choice Act.

2. Compare the eligibility requirements, safeguards, provider roles, and procedural steps of the three laws, including recent amendments.

3. Identify key risk management, bioethics, and patient relations considerations for organizations, including provider opt-out, capacity and informed consent, family communication and confidentiality, and documentation and reporting requirements.

About Our Presenter

Andrew "Andy" A. Oppenberg, DPS, MPH, HEC-C, CPHRM, DFASHRM

Andy Oppenberg is a healthcare ethicist, educator, and nationally recognized leader in healthcare risk management and patient safety. He is President of Asclepius Healthcare Consultants, where he has advised healthcare organizations since 1999 on bioethical, medico-legal, regulatory, accreditation, and licensing matters.

Andy serves as a community bioethicist on the Bioethics Committee and Bioethics Response Consultation Team at Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center, where he previously spent more than a decade as Director of Risk Management and Patient Safety Officer, chairing the Patient Grievance Committee and serving as Accountable Executive for the Institutional Review Board. His career also includes risk management leadership at Kaiser Permanente, faculty service in Graduate Medical Education at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and fifteen years as Vice President of Loss Prevention and Education with the Cooperative of American Physicians/Mutual Protection Trust. He has established and led four risk management and patient safety departments and developed policies on bioethics consultation, unrepresented patients, informed consent and refusal, and end-of-life care, including withholding and withdrawing treatment, DNR/DNI orders, and Advance Directives/POLST.

Since 2013, Andy has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in health care ethics, health law, and health administration at California State University, Northridge. He holds a Doctorate in Professional Studies in Bioethics, with a concentration in Healthcare Ethics and Public Policy, from Albany Medical College's Alden March Bioethics Institute, a Master of Public Health from UCLA, and a bachelor's degree in Health and Safety Studies from Cal State LA.

A Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Health Care Risk Management (ASHRM), Andy served as ASHRM's President in 2013 and as Editor of the Journal of Healthcare Risk Management. He is a past President of the Southern California Association for Healthcare Risk Management, which honored him for lifetime achievement in the field. He has presented more than 500 programs to over 18,000 healthcare professionals, and his recent work includes a 2025 article in The American Journal of Bioethics on surrogate decision-making and a textbook chapter on bioethical and risk management issues in kidney transplantation.