Washington is one of the five states in the US where physician-assisted suicide is legal. The others are: Oregon, Vermont, California and Montana--via court decision.
The episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Makeup for a Single-Camera Series (Non-Prosthetic).
The title of this episode derives from the Johnny Mandel song Suicide is Painless, written for the film MASH (1970). It also served as the theme for the MASH (1972) television series which focuses on a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. This episode centers around Owen's flashback to his time as an Army surgeon in Iraq.