A doctor treats her own family members when the family's primary care doctor is out of town. Robotic health workers offer a potential answer to labor shortages, but their use could dehumanize those they’re meant to serve and those they replace. The first ethical violation that Dr. Smith is guilty of is having a personal relationship with a patient. The technology offers a promising benefit for treating patients who struggle with medication adherence, but critics cite concerns about who should have access to such data and how it can be protected. The remainder of this chapter focuses on health care issues and planning for health decisions. Legal and Ethical Issues for Health Professionals - Essay Example. Category: Articles, News, How to Become a Nursing Home Administrator, AdventHealth University’s Master of Science in Spiritual Care Gains Important Accreditation Affirmation, Healthcare Administration in Strategy and Innovation, Advanced Imaging Certificate in Vascular Interventional Radiography, Advanced Imaging Certificate in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Advanced Imaging Certificate in Computed Tomography, Master of Healthcare Administration in Strategy and Innovation and Master of Business Administration (MHA/MBA) Dual Degree, “How Predictive Analytics in Healthcare Is Improving Patient Care”, , “First Digital Pill Approved to Worries About Biomedical ‘Big Brother’”, , “The Medical Ethics of the Coronavirus Crisis”, , “Too Many Tests, Too Little Time: Doctors Say They Face ‘Moral Injury’ Because of a Business Model That Interferes with Patient Care”, , “U.S. A patient’s family asks the doctor not to tell their elderly mother that her tumor is malignant. However, even anonymized data can be misused. Ethical and Legal Issues in Healthcare is a definitive resource for healthcare students and professionals in nursing, medicine, and the allied health sciences, providing a comprehensive overview and exploration of today’s ethical and legal landscape in healthcare delivery. Advances such as DNA mapping and bioidentical organs hold the potential to lengthen lives dramatically, but treatments that are prohibitively expensive for many or most patients violate the tenets of health equity. Healthcare informatics is a design of communication, information, and documentation in an electronic health record (EHR). Hospitals May Have to Ration Care During the Pandemic. Here are a few legal issues that affect the healthcare system on a regular basis: Antitrust issues and ACOs – Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs) consist of groups of doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers, who collaborate voluntarily to provide coordinated high-quality care to patients. An Ethical and Legal Analysis”, Deloitte Insights, “Using Predictive Analytics in Health Care”, Electronic Health Reporter, “First Do No Harm: The Ethics of Healthcare in 2020”, GINAhelp.org, Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, Healthcare Financial Management Association, “Beyond Compliance: Healthcare CFOs Face Many Situations in Which Ethics Can Guide Decision-making”, HealthITAnalytics, “What Are Precision Medicine and Personalized Medicine?”, HealthTech, “How Predictive Analytics in Healthcare Is Improving Patient Care”, Medical Xpress, “Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns”, National Center for Biotechnology Information, “Considerations for Ethics Review of Big Data Health Research: A Scoping Review”, RoboticsBiz, “8 Ethical Issues in the Use of Robotics in Healthcare”, STAT, “Research in the Time of Coronavirus: Keep It Ethical”, The Conversation, “The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Forcing Us to Ask Some Very Hard Questions. But Are We Ready for the Answers?”, The Hasting Center, “Why Health Care Organizations Need Technology Ethics Committees”, The Medical Futurist, “The Most Pressing Issues in Bioethics”, The New York Times, “First Digital Pill Approved to Worries About Biomedical ‘Big Brother’”, The New Yorker, “The Medical Ethics of the Coronavirus Crisis”, The Washington Post, “Too Many Tests, Too Little Time: Doctors Say They Face ‘Moral Injury’ Because of a Business Model That Interferes with Patient Care”, The Washington Post, “U.S. Each issued-based section includes related questions that highlight specific challenges that leaders face when making day-to-day medical decisions and far-reaching policies that affect patient health. . Legal vs Ethical Issues . Here are just six of the major ethical issues facing the healthcare industry in 2020. Ethical and efficient governance mechanisms are essential for the pharmaceutical sector and health care delivery. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. Enabled by advances in the understanding of how unique molecular and genetic profiles make an individual susceptible to a particular disease, personalized medicine has applications in risk assessment, prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases. Ethical and Legal Issues in Healthcare is a definitive resource for healthcare students and professionals in nursing, medicine, and the allied health sciences, providing a comprehensive overview and exploration of today's ethical and legal landscape in healthcare delivery. Ethical issues related to medical errors can be categorized around four ethical principles: autonomy and right to self-determination; beneficence and nonmaleficence; disclosure and right to knowledge; and veracity (Bonney, 2014). The risk of moral injury can be particularly high in a profit-driven healthcare environment where multiple factors other than patient care influence treatment decisions. Cite this document Summary … Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing. A pioneer in online health sciences programs since 2001. Mary Dowd holds a doctorate in educational leadership and a master’s in counseling and student affairs from Minnesota State Mankato. Course Summary Health 301: Ethical & Legal Issues in Healthcare has been evaluated and recommended for 3 semester hours and may be transferred to over 2,000 colleges and universities. Successful treatment outcomes can give rise to deep feelings of gratitude that may possibly mistaken for physical attraction. Addressing the difficult ethical issues influencing the science and business of healthcare requires leaders with exceptional knowledge and skills. The use and effectiveness of population health is increasing in the era of big data, which can be used to find links between diseases and specific environments or socioeconomic groups. With courses in innovation, strategy, and ethical issues and public policy, AdventHealth University Online’s Master of Healthcare Administration in Strategy and Innovation and Master of Business Administration (MHA/MBA) Dual Degree program develops strategic thinkers and leaders capable of making significant impacts and initiating positive change. As Daniel Callahan and Bruce Jennings have noted, “[p]ublic health is one of the few professions that has, in many matters, legal power–in particular, the police power of the state–behind it. Many modern medical devices are capable of reporting an incredible variety of health information, with or without a patient’s knowledge. The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus provides a grim illustration of ethical issues in pandemic planning and response. Here’s One Approach.”, U.S. News & World Report, “Why Will It Take So Long for a COVID-19 Vaccine?”, World Health Organization, Ethical Issues in Global Health, December 10, 2020  |  Biological 3D printers can create limbs and organs customized for a patient’s body, and scientists use DNA mapping to “grow” organs that are genetically identical to a patient’s own cells, according to Electronic Health Reporter. Protecting patient privacy is essential, in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Legal and ethical issues are prevalent in the health care industry, and in particular for the nursing practice, where nurses have daily individual contact with patients. . The related field of precision medicine, or personalized medicine, also uses genomic data. Information must be sufficient and understandable, to enable the patient to make informed decisions that are in his best interest. However, the law doesn’t apply to nongenetic predictive data. Reusing stored biological samples and data collected from research participants in past studies, as well as samples collected from patients for clinical or diagnostic purposes, raises new issues about the responsibility of healthcare providers to obtain informed consent. The patient asks the X-ray technician if her doctor is disclosing everything he knows about her test results. Through the practice of de-anonymization, or data re-identification, anonymous data can be compared with publicly available information and matched to an individual. Intervention is required if mutual respect is not shown or if boundaries are crossed. Here’s One Approach.”, , “Why Will It Take So Long for a COVID-19 Vaccine?”. The same information that public health officials use to diagnose, treat, and promote public policies could potentially be used by insurance companies, lenders, marketers, landlords, and employers. Both ethically and legally, healthcare professionals are prohibited from sharing information about patients with other people. Pressure from hospital administrations, insurance companies and managed care organizations further constrain the choices for treatment and prescriptions. A digital sensor in the pills is activated by the patient’s stomach acid and generates an electrical signal that’s picked up by a patch on the rib cage and then transmitted to a smartphone app. A patient may give permission to a healthcare provider or clinical researcher to use a tissue sample for one test, for example, but have no control over its use in future projects. Advances in data storage and processing technology have dramatically changed the speed and volume of data analysis capabilities and given rise to predictive analytics. Ethical and Legal Issues In the correctional setting, the patient is at the core of professional nursing practice. Accidental or intentional disclosure of private patient information can result in litigation, huge fines and jail time for the violator. The protection of private patient information is one of the most important ethical and legal issues in the field of healthcare. Potential medical applications include analysis of radiologic images. Lacking a vaccine, public health officials have fought the outbreak with social distancing measures that slow the spread of the disease, helping to mitigate outbreak spikes that overwhelm medical facilities and ultimately result in more lives lost. The first digital pill to be approved in the United States was a form of the antipsychotic medication aripiprazole (sold under the trade name Abilify) in 2017. An analysis that reveals a high rate of a disease in a given population could be used to focus education and treatment efforts; it could also be used to adjust insurance coverage. Author Karen Trotochaud 1 Affiliation 1 Center for Ethics, Emory University, USA. Currently she is a dean of students at a large, public university. If resolution cannot be reached, a judge may need to rule on the matter. Principles of the Ethical Practice of Public Health external icon The Code is intended principally for public and other institutions in the United States that have an explicit public health mission. How do you test the efficacy of a new medical technology without harming patients? Nearly every decision that’s made has ethical implications–for patients, for providers and for healthcare leaders. A final theme addressed in this issue elucidates the legal and health policy conflicts that arise with the use of AI in health care. Patients expect that they can speak to healthcare professionals in confidence, and both legal and ethical guidelines exist to preserve that confidentiality. These issues are a major focus for the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), which offers a working group for members that is specifically geared toward ongoing education about ethical, legal and social issues related to health informatics. This information is protected by laws and regulations such as HIPPA, but there are still concerns Scott, et al, 2005). Ethical Issue Facing Health Care: Electronic Patient Records One of the main ethical issues that faces health care is the security of patient information. Customized medicine refers to the creation of bioidentical limbs and organs to replace injured or missing ones. It thus has an obligation both toward government, which controls it, and toward the public that it s… The fact that the patient is incarcerated is only a circumstance of his or her situation and does not, and should not, change how the nurse practices or how the nurse views the patient. Health administrators responsible for healthcare finance management decisions may be put in a position to question, for example, whether a drug needs to be prescribed or an imaging test needs to be done. Robotics are already heavily used in healthcare; robot-assisted surgeries are now commonplace, and robotic prosthetics are advancing rapidly. Elite care … Therefore, interpretation of legal acts for allied health professionals varies greatly from state to Bonnie Fremgern, Ethical Issues in Healthcare Healthcare ethics and law are intertwined. Fear of legal action may also cause providers to engage in “defensive medicine.” Writ… The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 prohibits employers and health insurers from considering genetic information when making decisions such as hiring and firing or health insurance eligibility. Ethical and legal dilemmas arise when the health care provider and the patient, or the patient’s family, have differing opinions on appropriate care. Patient safety may be compromised, resulting in injury and lawsuits. May-Jun 2006;29(3):165-70. doi: 10.1097/00129804-200605000-00007. Such analysis promises more accurate diagnostic and therapeutic assessments, but assessments based purely on technology and data, no matter how accurate, lack an essential human touch. Wrestling with equal treatment vs. VIP treatment for donors and other influential people. Population health is the analysis of health outcomes of large groups of people. Access to care poses difficult ethical and legal dilemmas for health care professionals, who sign an oath not to harm their patient. A plastic surgeon discloses names of his well-known clients at a cocktail party. The ethical code of health care professionals states that patients have the right to know the truth about their medical condition, and that they can choose treatment options. 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