Values and Ethics in Healthcare Management
The code of ethics of healthcare organization goes hand in hand with the code of ethics of physicians, both of them are required to follow their ethics to render care to patients. The code of medical ethics has become the fundamental law of the healthcare organization and is applicable to all its personnel, including the trustees. The healthcare organization code of ethics clearly states that to render care to patients, to impart scientific knowledge to its personnel, prevention of diseases and responsibilities of a healthcare organization.
The very personal information given by a patient and observations made during examination and treatment by the staff of a healthcare organization should be held as a sacred trust and should never be revealed except during academic discussions and in a court of law.
Thus the code of ethics acts as a lighthouse and fixes the responsibility on all those including trustees, administrators, medical staff, and other personnel of the healthcare organization who have anything whatsoever to do with the care of the patient to make every effort to ensure that all patients receive the best possible care with minimum delay, with the utmost skill and efficiency and with the greatest of personal considerations.
Virtually every healthcare organization today has something akin to a code of conduct and certainly a corporate compliance effort. Unfortunately, the first decade of the 21st century will probably be remembered for the host of industrial scandals in which corporate and personal greed hit a new low. 1These, as well as numerous other examples, suggest several alternative hypotheses regarding the ethics of healthcare managers: (1) the pressure on healthcare manager is getting so great that the ethical fiber is breaking down at an increasing rate, (2) the low-level ethics of healthcare managers are finally being discovered and exposed; or perhaps, (3) healthcare managers are simply devoid of any sense of ethics. I personally reject hypotheses 2 and 3 but find hypotheses 1 quite plausible because I have seen it on countless occasions.
