Tools to evaluate how health care facilities perform ethically are in their infancy. The VA Health Care System hopes others can benefit from its experience.
By Tanya Albert Henry
amednews.com
Originally posted May 20, 2013
How often does a physician have enough time to discuss a treatment recommendation with a patient?
Would a doctor be reluctant to raise concerns if he or she believes a colleague's clinical abilities are impaired?
How often are notes or papers with identifiable patient information left in areas where other patients, relatives or staff members might view the sensitive material?
These are just a few of the questions the National Center for Ethics in Health Care at the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs is using to query its staff at the VA Health Care System. The goal is to help facilities see what they are doing well in terms of ethics and point out areas where they could be doing more.
The concept is similar to the recent push to evaluate quality of care by asking about procedural issues such as how well physicians are helping patients control hypertension or whether hospitals are keeping infection rates low.
Ethics evaluations, though, are not so common, and surveys do not tie payment to how well facilities score. However, the idea of measuring ethics as a component of quality of care is gaining momentum, and leaders in the field say its time has come.
“This is about managing ethics the same way you manage health care quality,” said Ellen Fox, MD, chief ethics in health care officer for the Veterans Health Administration. “Ethics quality is an important area that can have a dramatic effect on health care, including life-and-death decisions. … An effective ethics program promotes better patient care, better patient satisfaction, better efficiency.”
The entire story is here.
