Ethics and Responsibility in Healthcare

Introduction
Ethics and responsibility in healthcare is not solely about the decision making done at the patients’ bedside. Rather, it also encompasses decisions undertaken by executives and board of directors in their corporate positions and offices. Corporate ethics and responsibility in healthcare offer viewpoints that can aid healthcare managers accomplish the utmost ethical standards as they undertake their providers of healthcare services, employers, in addition to entities for community service.
Addressing corporate ethics and responsibility issues within a healthcare entity begins the compliance of the pertinent legislations and codes of practice. As a provider of high quality patient care with scarce resources, there is the need to have the ability to make a distinction between the inappropriate and appropriate methods of taking expense into account when making decisions regarding practices and processes of patient care. Secondly, as an employer, there is need for the entity to utilize proper criteria for ascertaining remunerations and wages, making equitable decisions regarding downscaling and to react most suitably to personnel walkouts and union endeavors. As an entity for community service, it is imperative to comprehend the accountabilities to the society in the manner of advertisement, disposition of medical left-over, and the kinds of business unions to enter (Weber, 2001).
Review of Literature
Organizational ethics is primarily concerned with aspects regarding integrity, responsibility, and choice. It encompasses a detailed framework that comprises of the generation and execution of practices, processes and policies that endeavor to make certain that the performance of an entity is incessant with its main purpose of ethical objectives. It is therefore pivotal that the challenge of maintaining institutional integrity in healthcare be set in a way that acknowledges several stakeholder associations, the responsibilities owed to them and the impact of stakeholders on the standards, decisions, and actions of health care organizations (Reiser, 1994).
In accordance to a research study undertaken by Gallagher and Goodstein (2000), the occurrence of corporate ethics issues within the health care setting are a significant result of the constantly transforming structure of health care delivery. The authors lay emphasis on three fundamental themes associated to corporate ethics and health care ethics, comprising of integrity, responsibility and choice. Imperatively, these three aspects are assumed in a deliberation of the process of Mission Discernment as it has been established and carried to within an assimilated healthcare system. The authors delineate the manner in which practices of organizational reflection can benefit health care organizations to make pivotal choices in tempestuous settings that advance the core mission and values and accomplish organizational responsibilities to a wide variety of stakeholders (Gallagher and Goodstein, 2000).
The conception of ethics and corporate social responsibility has been the discussed by numerous academics. However, in the health care industry, the advancement of attention in this matter is quite recent. In accordance to Russo (2016), despite the fact that several practices in the healthcare setting are already socially responsible, evolving from a series of socially responsible conduct to a socially responsible entity encompasses a more amalgamated cognizance of the mission and the needs of the participants in the health sector. The author emphasizes that health organizations can utilize their resources in such a manner as to efficaciously and suitably satisfy the health needs of the population they serve.
Based on the article, Russo (2016) insists that mutual governance, individual and professional responsibility, an all-inclusive approach in medicine and collaboration for the good of the organization in addition to that of the health of the patient are key components that constitute corporate ethics and responsibility in healthcare and can result in sufficient satisfaction of needs.
Changes in contemporary societies instigate the discernment and opinion that ethical behavior is pivotal in organization’s practices particularly in the manner they cope with aspects of the society. By ethics and social responsibility, it is intended that healthcare organizations can meet their key goals and objectives of achieving a certain public effort or of increasing the profits of the shareholders but at the same time satisfying other significant objectives with respect to the satisfactions of the interests of shareholders. Most of all, this is done in moral manner that if full of integrity, transparency and responsibility (Brandao et al., 2013).
In accordance to the authors, the key instigators of corporate governance are to improve the performance of the organization and guaranteeing its social responsibility and receptiveness specifically with respect to the pursuit of the common good, and to encourage conformity with respect to accountability engagements in an equitable and transparent manner. In order to achieve these purposes, an intricate system of internal and external controls is more often than not developed. Open accountability is the innate print of good corporate governance through the presence of public comprehensive processes for assessing the health care organization activity, with complete public statement, inclusive budgeting, fair complaint measures, satisfactory privacy protection, external audit, financial statement and annual report, in addition to internal audits, ethical standards, revelation of directors’ performance and compensation and performance assessment (Brandao et al., 2013).
Reddy and Mythri (2016) lay an emphasis on the necessity for teaching and exercising professional ethical codes and for being warned regarding the free market value system which does not indicate any potential in the healthcare organization. Imperatively, the authors indicate that healthcare is a shared and public good that has to be well-maintained by the same token by the healthcare organization and also the welfare state in its entirety. In the notion of impartiality, the two elements of individual’s responsibility toward the poor those lacking medical cover and also the society’s enhancement profiting the individual work communally and benefit each other. In the contemporary commercial, political, and social actuality, the medial fraternity ought to lay emphasis beyond the professional codes and medical committees onto the corporate ethics and responsibility in healthcare. Different from other articles above, this research study outlines that a key issue in healthcare is the consideration of utilization of more inventive approaches of monitoring and advancing ethics and responsibility within healthcare organization unlike the conventional ethical committees.
Collins (2010) shares the same sentiments by examining the aspect of corporate social responsibility and the healthcare managers in the forthcoming periods. The decision making together with the actions undertaken by healthcare managers are more often than not largely dissected by the general public. Taking into consideration the prevailing economic environment, managers may experience serious pressure to generate greater organizational outcomes with scarcer resources. This could involuntarily become a test or challenge to their moral strength and their social perception. The outcomes of the research study undertaken by the author show that forthcoming managers in healthcare entities may hold patients with great significance contrasted with profit maximization. Nonetheless, the outcomes of the study also indicate that such managers within the healthcare sector may continue to require directions, guidelines, regulations, and legal authorizations to direct their actions and conduct. This study is important within the topic under study for the reason that it has become progressively more ostensible that the conduct of individuals in the healthcare area impact more than simply the stakeholders of the organizations. Within such organizations, mistakes and blunders in management approaches as well as unethical leadership decisions can influence all stakeholders and shareholders akin.
Fox et al. (2010) also recommend divergence from the traditional aspect of ethics to integrated ethics, which is an inventive program purpose to augment ethics quality in health care. Imperatively, health care organizations are intricate and multifaceted entities that do not fit virtually into any of the known social contexts. For instance, healthcare establishments have to cope with issues of clinical ethics, such as those encompassing life-supporting treatments and emanating conflicts between healthcare professionals and families. In addition, hospitals have to deal with aspects of corporate and managerial ethics. All at once, hospitals have to be in compliance with a largely comprehensive and complex group of legal and regulatory standards.
According to Fox et al. (2010), traditionally, within healthcare establishments, the fundamental instrument for dealing with ethical issues has been the institutional ethics committee. However, the authors make the argument that this approach has numerous downsides. First, the ethics committees are not properly assimilated with other departments of the healthcare organization. Secondly, there is a lack of properly delineated purpose and also lack of quality standards and culpability. Moreover, these customary ethics committees have not progressed in reaction to the advances of the past two decades. In its place, the authors recommend an integrated ethics model.
Conclusion
Healthcare continues to be a key deliberated topic universally. In spite of the several changes that have occurred, healthcare is still a subject that is highly debated upon and continues to experience incessant change. One of the key aspects of concern takes into account the impact of business on healthcare. This distinctive issue emanates from the acknowledgement that health care continues to be in flux, that health care remains a contentious matter amidst a wide range of stakeholders, and that the impact of business on healthcare is a pivotal primary source of pressure (Wick, 2002).
Bearing this in mind, corporate ethics and responsibility play a key role in health care. For a long time, accountability and transparency within healthcare organizations has been undertaken by ethical committees. However, this has proved to be insufficient and several academics are calling for more innovative approaches.
Reddy and Mythri (2016) insist on the need for educating and practicing professional codes of ethics and being aware of the values involved in the free market. More importantly the author emphasizes on going past professional codes and medical committees. Similar perspectives are delineated by Collins (2010) in that even managers and members of committees within the healthcare industry may necessitate instructions, regulations and legal sanctions to guide their actions and behavior.
Most of all, Fox et al. (2012) indicates that for healthcare organizations in the contemporary to be more accountable and ethical, it is imperative to shift away from the customary ethics committee. This is for the reason that they are not correctly or suitably incorporated with other aspects of the healthcare entity. They also lack a clear purpose and quality standards and responsibility. In addition, they have lacked progression in over two decades. Therefore, they key aspect of corporate ethics and responsibility discussed in this paper is for healthcare institutions to shift from conventional ethics that are ineffective and espouse innovative approaches.


References
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