Posted: May 27th, 2015

HEALTH MANAGEMENT

Ethical Issues in Healthcare Management

Ethics is a disciplined study of morality concerning human character and behavior as well as that of institutions. It is directed at what one owes regarding the other.    Today, healthcare management is an arrangement among the following groups: consumers or the patients, the providers who are the physicians and other health care professionals, the insurer who reimburses for any care given and finally the primary buyer of health services (Darragh & McCarrick, n.d.).Ethics is always seeking to know what ought to be the morality of health care institutions. Therefore in looking at ethics in healthcare management we include the concepts of virtues, interest, autonomy and the issues of beneficence. Virtues is what makes the physician to consider the interests of the patient, and interest is the stake claimed on the outcome, Beneficence makes the physician protect patient interest as understood from a clinical discipline perspective. Autonomy directs the physician to protect the interest of the patient as observed in their beliefs and values (McCullough, 1993).

The main ethical issues currently facing healthcare management are:

1. Discrimination: whether or not insurance firms go out of their way to only have healthy clients and discriminate against unhealthy clients.
2. Age: Is it worth spending a fortune to assist someone in their 90s?
3. Doctors: are they manipulating data so that they are within parameters set by the insurance companies?
4. Patient’s rights and responsibilities: Are patients being given only what they can afford by their insurance cover or what they deserve? Is it correct to deny cover to individuals who have neglected their health or those who have taken care of their health?
5. Utility versus rights: is it good to offer health in a way that everyone benefits at a minimum or should providers honor people’s rights of obtaining the best health they can get?
6. Patient autonomy: are clinicians respecting the patient’s decisions to receive suboptimal care?

Present Climate around Ethical Issue

America’s health care, financing, organizing and delivery is now increasingly being provided by large scale institutions. Employers and government are less concerned by individual needs of their workers and continue to buy health insurance in bulk for all employees; this becomes an excess for some and inadequate for others. As a result medical disasters due to limited resources are increasingly being observed (McCullough, 2010). Physicians now have to respond to institutional pressure because they depend on the institution to be able to take care of their patients and for their wellbeing. Secondly there is the issue of escalating costs of healthcare brought about by the bureaucratic procedures that focus on procedures for insurance cover.

Factors that Impact Issues

Profit pursuit by the insurance companies makes their management to formulate policies that ensure they remain with healthy consumers who are not a cost to the company. As a result, unhealthy or those with the risk of illness like the old are forced to purchase expensive covers or be left out. Social rights of universal healthcare demand that patients get all that they require in order to be healthy again and this is a costly approach and providers are forced to limit the amount of cover they provide. The need for physicians to operate within parameters of insurance firms in patient care pressurizes them to neglect important procedures in fear of lawsuits. Personal values and beliefs lead patients to reject what clinically is viewed to be the most optimal care (Lantos, Matlock & Wendler, 2011).

Recommended Solutions

The formulation of policies should consider the respect for autonomy for the patient and ensure that interests are put into consideration. Cases where individual liberties are overridden should be supported on the grounds of effectiveness of the policy in realizing its goal. Secondly the policy should be proportionate, publicly justifiable and necessary and should be the alternative promising the least infringement (Childress et. al., 2002). Physicians and patients should interact in an informed meaningful way especially when it comes to the decisions process, it should not be a formal bureaucratic ritual. Public policy should take into consideration whether fiduciary institutions are necessary and how they will be supported financially (McCullough, 1993).