Dr. Tom Jeanne:

It is important to understand that in Oregon we have had a couple of changes to the law over time. Several years back, there was a removal of the 15-day waiting period requirement only for those patients for whom it had been determined had less than that time to live. That is one thing that changed slightly. During this past year, we have also had the removal of the residency requirement. Initially, and for most of the law, patients had to be Oregon residents to use Oregon's law. After a lawsuit, that was found to be not right and has been removed from our requirements. It no longer has to be Oregon patients. However, it still has to be Oregon physicians who participate in this act.

On the general increase, we certainly had increasing awareness of this law and also perhaps normalisation of medical aid in dying in Oregon and other parts of the US. That is part of it. We also have an ageing population. There are more people with terminal illnesses who may want to use the law. I can only speculate that those are some of the reasons for the increase.