Brilliant Answer

Balancing Legal and Ethical Obligations

A health services organization serves the patient population by providing a multitude of health services in the form of medical expertise for diagnosis, treatment, and long-term care for sustained positive health outcomes. However, as much as health services organizations are a service organization providing care and health service delivery, they too must meet business bottom lines, ensure positive account balances, and adhere to healthcare policies and law. What potential challenge might healthcare administration leaders face when balancing legal, ethical, business, and service obligations of a health services organization?

While a health services organization has as its client the patient population it serves, and the medical and healthcare staff engaged in healthcare delivery, it too must respond to and work within the guidelines of the board in day to day operations. In this way, healthcare administration leaders truly engage in a juggling act to balance the needs and interests of several stakeholders while delivering health services.

For this Discussion, reflect on the role of the board in resolving internal conflict between compliance, ethical obligations, and business needs. Think about how healthcare administration leaders might balance these conflicts and potential challenges for effective health services delivery.

Post an explanation of the role of the board in resolving internal conflict between compliance, ethical obligations, and business needs. Then, describe how you, as a current or future healthcare administration leader, might address these challenges for a health services organization. Be specific and provide examples.

Discussion

Continue the Discussion to 2 of your colleagues and describe those regulatory requirements that may commonly conflict with a health service organization’s value set or moral obligations.

Each Colleagues 250 words or more (Colleague 1 250 words, Colleague 2 250 words, Total 500 words)

Colleague 1

There will always be some conflict within a healthcare organization. Therefore, compliance is a set of rules and policies designed to be followed for the best outcome of any service. To provide the best service, healthcare leaders must ensure that the policies and compliances are being followed ethically. Healthcare leaders should balance conflict and potential challenges for effective health service delivery by ensuring that such policies and standards are set and compliant. Healthcare administrators must train their entire team on such ethical standards so that there is no compromise in the vital area of functionality and no significant impact on the business operations.

Furthermore, the board's role in resolving internal conflict between compliance, ethical obligations and business is to help set the scope of the compliance and ethics program; approve key policies and procedures; align incentives; and require meaningful, substantive reporting on the organization's compliance and ethics activities (Roach, 2007).

As a future healthcare administrator, I might address these challenges for a health services organization by following the ethical guidelines of my organization that are aligned with the organization's vision and mission—communicating the ethical guidelines and getting informed consent wherever required from the patient.     

Roach, D. R. (2007). Journal of Health Care Compliance — November – December 2007. The Board of Directors' Role in Compliance & Ethics. https://www.chausa.org/publications/health-progress/article/July-august-2008/the-board-of-directors'-role-in-compliance-ethics.

Colleague 2

Balancing Legal and Ethical Obligations

Conflicts in healthcare will always arise at some point between compliance, ethical obligations, and business needs. The role of the board regarding these internal conflicts are acting in good faith in the exercise of its oversight responsibility for the organization, including making inquiries to ensure:  a corporate information and reporting system exists, and the reporting system is satisfactory to assure the Board that appropriate information relating to compliance with applicable laws will come to its attention timely and as a matter of course (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015). Boards are encouraged to use commonly recognized public compliance resources as benchmarks for organizations. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, OIG’s voluntary compliance program guidance documents, and OIG Corporate Integrity Agreements (CIAs) can be used as baseline assessment tools for Boards and management in determining what specific functions may be necessary to meet the requirements of an actual compliance program. The Guidelines “offer incentives to organizations to reduce and eventually eliminate criminal conduct by providing a structural foundation from which an organization may self-police its own conduct finished an effective compliance and ethics program” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015).

As healthcare administrator the focus is to make sure when addressing the challenges what’s being focused on is the having a strong development and use of internal controls to monitor devotion to relevant statutes, regulations, and program requirements with the board. Another focus for leadership is having proactive behavior such as improved work performance job performance and socialization for employees, the only downfall is that can cause more stress, tension and reduced organization learning for the staff (Singh, & Rangnekar, 2020). To assist with these challenges effectively the focus would be to actively take charge of current situation as well as engaging in active learning for creating improved work situations for employees. This would make a big difference for the organization from the leadership perspective.

 

References

Singh, A., & Rangnekar, S. (2020). Empowering Leadership, Commitment to Managers and

Company and Employee Proactivity: A Study of National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Accredited Hospitals. Journal of Health Management, 22(1), 41–56.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2015). Practical guidance for health care

governing boards on compliance oversight. Retrieved from https://oig.hhs.gov/compliance/compliance-guidance/docs/practical-guidance-for-health-care-boards-on-compliance-oversight.pdf