HCM5312_U4D1
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Texas A&M University, Commerce *
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5910
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Medicine
Date
Feb 20, 2024
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docx
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Uploaded by lonimbuchanan
Ethics in healthcare is so important because it forces healthcare workers to make decisions and good judgements in order to remain respectful of the rights of the patients, while also maintaining quality of care. Because Whittaker Memorial is in a lower income area, there will likely be a big push for population health initiatives in order to get more people to come to the hospital for management. The majority of the health population that will be seen at Whittaker is African American, so population health initiatives would likely focus on conditions that disproportionately affect that community over other ethnicities, such as cardiovascular issues. However, the utilitarian school of thought is that you must think about what will do the greatest good for the largest amount of people, and these issues certainly do not affect everyone in the community, so the population health programs might not be in their best interest. (DeCamp, Pomerantz, Cotts, Dzeng, Farber, Lehmann, Reynolds, Sulmasy, & Tilburt, 2018)
Another ethical dilemma that Whittaker will have to take into consideration is the allocation of healthcare resources at the point of care. Since Whittaker caters to mainly low-income patients who are either on Medicaid, Medicare, or uninsured, this can leave the facility with a huge strain on resources such as appointments, medications, equipment, bandages, and even healthcare employees to see to the patients. Unbeknownst to a lot of patients, they are competing with others to receive these resources and benefits. Whittaker’s staff will need to have a solid triage process in place to make these decisions at the point of care, but also while not making it obvious to the patients that this is what is being done. For example, giving medication samples to a patient who is compliant with their care, but letting another
patient who you know is not going to comply wait until their local pharmacy has a medication in stock. (Crowe, 2010)
Reference
Crowe, M. L. (2010). Allocation of health care resources at the point of care: An ethical dilemma for health care providers. The Journal of Legal Medicine (Chicago. 1979), 31(4), 455-465. https://doi.org/10.1080/01947648.2010.535432
DeCamp, M., Pomerantz, D., Cotts, K., Dzeng, E., Farber, N., Lehmann, L., Reynolds, P. P., Sulmasy, L. S., & Tilburt, J. (2018). Ethical Issues in the Design and Implementation of Population Health Programs. Journal
of general internal medicine, 33(3), 370–375. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-017-4234-4
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