Lausanne, Switzerland ? A Swiss hospital has agreed to let an assisted-suicide organization help terminally ill patients take their own lives on its premises.

A spokesman for the Vaud University Hospital Center confirmed reports in Swiss newspapers Saturday that, starting in January, it would let the Exit society assist in the suicide of people already admitted to the hospital who can no longer go home.

The hospital will not accept people whose only goal in entering “is to prepare to end his life,” said Alberto Crespo, who is responsible for law and ethics at the hospital in Lausanne. “The purpose of a hospitalization remains therapeutic treatment.”

Exit is allowed to help terminally ill Swiss residents commit suicide elsewhere in Switzerland. Depending on local law, the suicides sometimes take place in a designated apartment or the patient’s home.

Switzerland’s policy is passive assistance to terminally ill people who have expressed a wish to die. Elsewhere in Europe, Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2001 and Belgium in 2002.