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The American Health Care Delivery System

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Consider the costs associated with the American healthcare system, the contentions associated with managed care implementation, and the continued problems associated with macro and microallocation within the system. What ethics should guide continuing change in the American Health Care delivery system? Why? Please include references.

Please give your point of view and examples of managed care facilities, so that I may find supportive data and use as a guide and reference. Thank you.

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Solution Summary

By responding to the questions, this solution explains ethical principles that should guide continuing change in the American Health Care delivery system and why. Supplemented with a highly informative article and illustrative examples about managed care.

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Please see response attached (also presented below), including one supporting article. I hope this helps and take care.

RESPONSE:

1. Consider the costs associated with the American healthcare system, the contentions associated with managed care implementation, and the continued problems associated with macro and microallocation within the system. What ethics should guide continuing change in the American Health Care delivery system? Why?

The main tension presently in ethics is one of focus: the ethical values and principles (e.g., AMA and ANA) are either written as patient-focused or they are written as profit-focused, which is the goal of managed care (e.g., the business side of things -government ideals). It seems that the patient-focused ethics (quality care) are often compromised in the present system, which is profit-driven. How can we bring balance back? How can we not compromise the patient care for the almighty dollar?

Presently, there are ethical codes and principles already in place (see Example 1 and 2 below) in most health care organizations and those purported by organizations, such as AMA (Example 2 below) and ANA. Ideally, the professional behavior is guided by these principles. Every mission statement of health care facilities makes mention that the main mission of the health care system is to provide quality care to patients, so that should be first and foremost, and ethics (theory, codes and principles) help keep the focus as patient-driven versus profit-driven. Ethics are about right and wrong, and ethical codes and principles are intended to guide professional behavior to decrease the risk of un-ethical behavior (e.g., discrimination, etc.). Ethics is about justice and fair treatment to all patients, regardless of race, sex, religion, socioeconomic status, etc.

Some would argue that it is especially important today - to bring ethics to the forefront - because of the managed care delivery system in America - as the present system of delivery is indeed profit driven, which increases the potential for professional decisions to be un-ethical in the sense of being profit-driven and focused on the business side of the health care system versus providing quality care (both are important since the organization needs money to keep its door open) (but never at the expense of quality care, so the ethics should be patient-driven as is written into mission statement, policies and ethical codes and principles).

That is, it is argued that the present managed care system is more ...

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