Health
Advance Care Planning: Preparing for Your Future Healthcare


Are you prepared?
All Albertans should prepare for a possible scenario where they may be unable to make their own medical decisions, especially if they are older or have chronic or serious illness.
If you became seriously ill, would your family, caregivers and healthcare providers know how you would want to be cared for? Who would speak for you if you were too sick to speak for yourself?
Learn more about advance care planning.
Advance Care Planning
A way to help you think about, talk about and document wishes for health care in the event that you become incapable of consenting to or refusing treatment or other care.
You may never need your advance care plan – but if you do, you’ll be glad that it’s there and that you have had these conversations, to make sure that your voice is heard when you cannot speak for yourself.
Goals of Care Designation
A medical order used to describe and communicate the general aim or focus of care including the preferred location of that care.
Although advance care planning conversations don’t always result in determining goal of care designation, they make sure your voice is heard when you cannot speak for yourself
Medical Care
Focuses on medical tests and interventions to cure or manage a person’s illness, but does not use resuscitative or life support measures.
Comfort Care
Focuses on providing comfort for people with life-limiting illness when medical treatment is no longer an option.
Resuscitative Care
Focuses on prolonging or preserving life using medical or surgical interventions, including, if needed, resuscitation and intensive care.
Learn about Goals of Care Designation ordersIf you can’t speak for yourself, your Goals of Care Designation helps the healthcare team match your values and preferences to care that is right for you and your healthcare condition.
Personal directive: Choose your decision-makerYour personal directive is a legal document. It names someone you trust to make important decisions for you if you can’t make these decisions yourself.
Keep advance care planning documents in a Green SleeveThis is a plastic pocket that holds your advance care planning forms.
Resources | video libraryGet more information on advance care planning and find more resources to help you or explore our video library.
Health
Quebec to start monkeypox vaccination of contacts as officials confirm 25 cases
MONTREAL — Quebec’s interim public health director says the province could start vaccinating people against monkeypox as soon as Friday.
Dr. Luc Boileau says there are now 25 confirmed cases of the disease in the province and about 30 suspected cases are under investigation.
He says the province has received supplies of smallpox vaccine from the federal government, and it will be administered to people who have been in close contact with confirmed cases of the disease.
Dr. Caroline Quach, the chair of Quebec’s immunization committee, says the vaccine has been shown to prevent monkeypox in animal studies if it is administered within four days of an exposure and can reduce severity if it is administered up to 14 days after an exposure.
She says the disease is transmitted only through prolonged close contact.
Boileau says the majority of cases are in adult men who have been in sexual contact with people who have the disease, and there has been one case in a person under 18.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 26, 2022.
The Canadian Press
Health
Tentative $161.5M settlement reached in WVa opioid trial


By John Raby in Charleston
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Attorneys for the state of West Virginia and two remaining pharmaceutical manufacturers have reached a tentative $161.5 million settlement just as closing arguments were set to begin in a seven-week trial over the opioid epidemic, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said Wednesday.
Morrisey announced the development in court in the state’s lawsuit against Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc., AbbVie’s Allergan and their family of companies. The judge agreed to put the trial on hold to give the parties the opportunity to work out a full settlement agreement in the upcoming weeks.
“Today does represent a very big day for our state,” Morrisey said later at a news conference.
The trial started April 4. The lawsuit accused the defendants of downplaying the risks of addiction associated with opioid use while overstating the benefits.
Under the tentative deal, West Virginia would receive more than $134.5 million in cash, while Teva would supply the state with $27 million worth of Narcan, a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses, restore breathing and bring someone back to consciousness.
By reaching a settlement, “it obviously puts us in a position where we mitigate risk,” Morrisey said. “We could win if we kept going to trial. I think we would have won. No guarantees, of course. But then we might be subject to five years of appeals and then we wouldn’t see any resources for five years.”
“I want to make sure we start to put feet on the ground now. And I want to see resources targeted to this epidemic now.”
Under a plan announced by Morrisey in February, 72.5% of the settlement will go to a nonprofit foundation established to distribute money in opioid-related litigations, 24.5% would be allocated to local governments and 3% would go to the state. The foundation would consist of an 11-member board, including five state appointees and representatives from six regions of the state. The board members will have expertise in fields such as mental health, substance misuse and law enforcement.
West Virginia had reached a $99 million settlement withdrugmaker Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. last month over the drugmaker’s role in perpetuating the opioid crisis in the state that has long led the nation in drug overdose deaths.
Before the trial started, Morrisey’s office announced the state settled part of the lawsuit involving another defendant, Endo Health Solutions, for $26 million.
In separate, similar lawsuits, the state of West Virginia previously reached a $37 million settlement with McKesson Corp. in 2019, and $20 million with Cardinal Health Inc. and $16 million with AmerisourceBergen Drug Co. in 2017.
After years of lawsuits, drugmakers, distribution companies and some pharmacies have been settling cases over the toll of opioids.
In deals finalized this year, the three biggest distribution companies and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson agreed to settlements totaling $26 billion over time. OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma is in court trying to win approval for a national settlement including up to $6 billion in cash, plus using future profits from a remade version of the company to fight the opioid crisis.
In other settlements this year, the distributors have agreed to pay Washington state, which did not participate in the national settlement with them, more than $500 million, and a group of companies are sending $276 million to Alabama.
In all, proposed and finalized settlements, judgements and criminal penalties over opioids have reached more than $47 billion since 2007. Much of the money is to be used only to address the crisis, which has been linked to the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans in the last two decades. A relatively small portion of the settlement money – at least $750 million in the Purdue deal – is to be paid to individual victims and their survivors.
In Charleston, a separate bench trial wrapped up last summer in a federal lawsuit accusing AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson of fueling the opioid crisis in Cabell County and the city of Huntington. That judge has not indicated when he will rule.
___
Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report.
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