Introduction
Healthcare is one of the areas in a country that requires careful attention since it applies to all individuals (Darr 351). As such, it is essential to address adequately all fields that require attention in healthcare. Even then, health care in many countries still faces ethical issues (Harris 37). In this context, most countries are unable to maintain principle equilibrium in distributive fairness, beneficence, and independence. For this reason, if a state adopts rationing, its impacts are felt in a number of dimensions including concerned population, services involved, as well as the degree of service coverage. Therefore, there is a need to address any ethical issues in healthcare to ensure that the provision of care is sufficient.
In the view of week 4’s lecture review and reading material, there were significant ethical issues learned. Some of these issues include:
Administrative Ethics in Healthcare
Usually, administrative components are common on most issues related to healthcare management (Harris 370). The fact that resources are scarce brings a lot of challenge to the provision of adequate care to individuals in many countries. Considering health care in the US, one concludes that this sector takes a significant percentage of the country’s revenue. According to Darr (353), there is poor coordination of insurance mechanisms in US, which is the reason many US citizens do not enjoy insurance cover. Ethically, the government ought to provide health care services including insurance covers to all citizens.
However, Harris (103) points out that administrative health care ethics should include issues such as confidentiality, fidelity, autonomy, integrity, honesty, as well as concepts touching on employee duties to organizations.
Resolution of conflicts
In any sector, conflicts are bound to occur. As such, it is important to consider some ethics while addressing conflicts in a bid to resolve them (Harris 307). In the healthcare sector, some of the possible areas where conflicts can occur are in the supplier and health care administrator relationships, cost control, and patient care. Conflicts usually result when a particular individual has duality of interest in a given organization, duty or to another person. With such, it becomes challenging to satisfy the conflicting needs simultaneously.
According to administrative ethics, conflicts in health care cannot be resolved without all parties understanding the underlying differences (Darr 351). As such, health care administrators ought to understand vividly the cause and extent of the conflict and establish commitment to doing the right thing in such cases. From the lecture, it was evident that administrative ethics encompasses a number of levels. For example, it operates under public, legal, organizational and at the personal interest levels. As such, the primary consideration is in cost against care, outside relationships, suspected misconduct, as well as medical errors. Such are the areas in health care for which administrative ethics gets involved.
Darr (352) attributes the availability of new methods of care administration to technological improvement. However, it is ethical to consider that not all the cases where involving extra cost would warrant better outcomes. As such, it becomes necessary to question the applicability of ethically putting cost before the care of any patient.
Administrative Ethics protects patients against physicians’ misconduct, as well as against the administration of wrong medication (Darr 351-353). Therefore, administrators in health care ought to design systematic strategies. For example, they may develop a comprehensive policy document. Such will help them to address ethical issues. However, for this to be successful, it is important to cite particular ethical challenges in order to establish the best methods of approaching the challenges.
Evidently, administrative ethics in health care plays a significant role in the operations of any institution. In addition, just as Harris (377) suggests, the application of administrative ethics in the health care system is important since it teaches learners how to behave while in medical positions. For this reason, it suffices that administrative health ethics in health care are beneficial to students in any medical related profession.
Ethical Issues Studied In Details
Health care encompasses many applications. There is a need for an in-depth study of ethical issues in health care. The particular concern ought to be in health care technology assessment; its significance along with cases of health care fraud is relevant to both health care administrators and learners (Darr 353). During the week 4’s, lecture a lot of focus on administrative health care ethics included:
Health Technology Assessment
Health technology assessment refers to the efficient and appropriate application of technologies in health care (Darr 351). In order to carry out effective assessment, it is important to consider the functionality, cost, and alternatives of technological use in Healthcare. This multidisciplinary field covers developmental implications of health in areas such as the economy, social, ethics, and medicine. The adoption of technology in healthcare provision is likely to create gaps between available resources and health care demand. As such, ethics in health technology demonstrates one’s reasons to establish the needs and priorities of health care. A number of technologies offer information that may conflict and hence affect personal risks of discrimination (Harris 300). Therefore, it necessitates an assessment to provide insights on a given technology and eliminate such cases.
Priority setting in health care
Since resources are scarce, it becomes essential to adopt better ways of dealing with the available resources. As such, priority setting finds use when it comes to the use of scarce resources in health care situations. Priority setting, therefore, refers to an elaborate strategy to population resource application in the context of scarcity (Darr 352). Decision-making closely associates with priority setting. On the other hand, decision implementation and rationing have a close link. However, the allocation and rationing of resource is different for different countries. For instance, in US, health care technology faces some restrictions without considering the cost and clinical effectiveness factors.
On the same context, rationing in the United States of America involves issues related to insurance cover and person’s eligibility for coverage. Europe, on the other hand, aims at ensuring that all persons are insured. However, priority setting involves decisions on budgetary allocation, prioritizing between interventions, service areas, and patient groups.
Contribution of the issues learned in one’s career
From the preceding, it is evident that administrative ethics in health care along with related principles are essential to the successful administration of health care among patients. In addition, the two concepts are important to learners in that they get considerable knowledge of how to apply ethics in the field of work. Knowledge in health care administrative ethics helps one to grow in the light of a better professional. As well, a learner in this area gets knowledge on information regarding conflicts resolution in the workplace. On the subject of health technology assessment, one acquires the necessary knowledge on what levels of technology are best in a health setting. Such is important since one can make priorities based on reliable evidence.
Works Cited
Darr, Kurt. Ethics in Health Services Management. Baltimore: Health Professions Press, 2005. Print.
Harris, Dean M. Contemporary Issues in Healthcare Law and Ethics. Chicago: Health Administration Press, 2008. Print.