§ 20-17-201 - Definitions. - Arkansas Statutes

20-17-201. Definitions.

As used in this subchapter:

(1) "Attending physician" means the physician who has primary responsibility for the treatment and care of the patient;

(2) "Declaration" means a writing executed in accordance with the requirements of 20-17-202(a);

(3) "Health care proxy" is a person eighteen (18) years old or older appointed by the patient as attorney-in-fact to make health care decisions including the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment if a qualified patient, in the opinion of the attending physician, is permanently unconscious, incompetent, or otherwise mentally or physically incapable of communication;

(4) "Health care provider" means a person who is licensed, certified, or otherwise authorized by the law of this state to administer health care in the ordinary course of business or practice of a profession;

(5) "Life-sustaining treatment" means any medical procedure or intervention that, when administered to a qualified patient, will serve only to prolong the process of dying or to maintain the patient in a condition of permanent unconsciousness;

(6) "Permanently unconscious" means a lasting condition, indefinitely without change in which thought, feeling, sensations, and awareness of self and environment are absent;

(7) "Person" means an individual, corporation, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, association, joint venture, government, governmental subdivision or agency, or any other legal or commercial entity;

(8) "Physician" means an individual licensed to practice medicine in this state;

(9) "Qualified patient" means a patient eighteen (18) or more years of age who has executed a declaration or appointed a health care proxy and who has been determined to be in a terminal condition or in a permanently unconscious state by the attending physician and another qualified physician who has examined the patient;

(10) "State" means a state, territory, or possession of the United States, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; and

(11) "Terminal condition" means an incurable and irreversible condition that, without the administration of life-sustaining treatment, will, in the opinion of the attending physician, result in death within a relatively short time.