The Supreme Court is to decide whether an NHS commissioning body has a legal duty to ask the Court of Protection to resolve disputes around treatment of an incapacitated patient, where doctors decide it is clinically inappropriate.
Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal ruled it was for the court to decide whether it was in the patient’s best interests for treatment to continue. It also declined to order interim relief, including dialysis, under section 48 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
The case concerns Robert Barnor, who died on 27 February after suffering several strokes leading to irreversible brain damage. Epsom and St Helier Hospitals NHS Trust disagreed that treatment should continue and made a “clinical decision” to stop dialysis.
