Here is a link to an article from the June 22 Brattleboro Reformer about the decision of tiny Grace Cottage Hospital to avail itself of its limited ability not to cooperate with assisted suicide: http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_23515442/grace-cottage-opts-out-assisted-suicide-law-now.
The law allows health care facilities to prohibit a physician practicing in the facility from writing a prescription to a patient resident in the hospital who intends to take it on the hospital premises. That is what Grace Cottage will do. Under the law, the hospital cannot stop a doctor from writing a prescription for a patient, then discharging him to take it elsewhere. It cannot stop a patient from getting a prescription before coming to the hospital, having a person bring it to him, and taking it in the hospital.
Both the medical staff president and the interim CEO of the hospital gave statements indicating that the exemption was enacted only to allow the hospital time to develop policies for implementing the law. The interim CEO, however, said he does not know whether Grace Cottage will ultimately allow assisted suicides to take place there. “It’s still ultimately a board decision,” he told the Reformer.
Bioethicist Wesley Smith, commenting in the National Review on the decisions of the three Vermont hospitals who have opted out of assisted suicide, at least for the time being, urges them to hold fast, remembering that “…suicide in a hospital affects other patients as well as the one who died” (http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/351770/vermont-hospitals-say-no-assisted-suicide-wesley-j-smith).