Business Ethics in Healthcare: Beyond Compliance

by Leonard J. Weber

Overview

Healthcare ethics is not just about decisions made at the bedside. It is also about decisions made in executive offices and in boardrooms. Business Ethics in Healthcare offers perspectives that can assist healthcare managers achieve the highest ethical standards as they face their roles as healthcare providers, employers, and community service organizations. Weber suggests guidelines and criteria based on the understanding that the healthcare organization is committed to patients' rights, to careful stewardship of resources, to just working conditions for employees, and to service to the community.

As Weber shows, addressing business ethics issues in a healthcare organization starts with complying with relevant laws and regulations. As a provider of high quality patient care with limited resources, it needs to be able to distinguish between the right way and the wrong way of taking cost into consideration when making decisions about patient care practices. As employer, the organization needs to use good criteria for determining wages and salaries, to know how to make fair decisions about downsizing, and to respond most appropriately to union organizing efforts and employee strikes. As a community service organization, it has particular responsibilities to the community in the way it advertises, how it disposes of medical waste, and the types of mergers it enters into.

Leonard J. Weber is on the faculty of the University of Detroit, Mercy. He has published over 70 articles and is the principal author of the "Case Studies in Ethics" column in Clinical Leadership & Management Review. He serves as an ethics consultant to several healthcare organizations and is a past president of the Medical Ethics Resource Network of Michigan.

Medical Ethics Series—David H. Smith and Robert M. Veatch, editors

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253338402
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	03/22/2001
Series:	Medical Ethics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Leonard J. Weber has been on the faculty of the University of Detroit Mercy since 1972. His work is focused on practical ethical concerns, particularly in healthcare and in business. He was selected to be the John L. Aram Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Gonzaga University for 2000-2001. Weber has published over 70 articles and is the principal author of the "Case Studies in Ethics" column in Clinical Leadership & Management Review. He serves as an ethics consultant to several health care organizations and is past President of the Medical Ethics Resource Network of Michigan. He is an enrollee-elected member of the Board of Directors of Health Alliance Plan, a non-profit managed care organization.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Table of Contents:

Introduction: Beyond Compliance, Beyond Integrity, Beyond Clinical Ethics

Part One: Business Ethics With A Difference
1. Healthcare Business Ethics
2. Ethics is not Neutral: A Framework for Making Decisions

Part Two: The Organization as Caregiver
3. Ethics, Cost, and the Quality of Care
4. Patient Rights in a Just Organization
5. Clinicians and Conflict of Interest: A Focus on Management
6. A Fair Hearing of Appeals of Denied Coverage in Managed Care Plans
7. Organizational Ethics: A Code is Only the Beginning

Part Three: The Organization as Employer
8. Just Wages and Salaries
9. Ethics and Downsizing
10. Patient Requests for Healthcare Providers of Specific Race or Sex
11. Conscientious Objection to Participation in Certain Treatment Options
12. Union Organizing and Employee Strikes

Part Four: The Organization as Citizen
13. Responsible Advertising
14. Environmental Responsibility and the Precautionary Principle
15. Community Serving Mergers and Acquisitions
16. Socially Responsible Investing

Part Five: Institutionalizing Business and Management Ethics
17. Components of a Business Ethics Program
18. The Organizational Ethics Committee

Notes