ESSAY: Legal and Ethical Dilemma Case Study
As we have seen, healthcare and medical technology is constantly evolving. The law often struggles to keep up with the fast progression of the health field. Choose a topic such as sterilization, artificial insemination, surrogacy, organ donations, clinical trials, genetic discrimination, stem cell research, chronic disease, infectious disease, end-of life, or another growing field and a state or federal legal case based on this topic. There are good case ideas in your textbook.
Your Portfolio Project provides an opportunity to evaluate a real-world ethical dilemma from the perspective of the healthcare/hospital administrator. You will use your skills and knowledge of ethics and health law as well as role playing to create a risk management plan for prevention of future situations to present to your Senior Leadership team and the Board of Governors.
Write a 12-15 page report evaluating your chosen topic/case and providing recommendations on how your facility can avoid legal ramifications while still maintaining your mission, values, and ethical principles. Your report should address the following substantive requirements:
- Description of the topic/case, including who it would affects and what it means for your facility.
- Assessment of the case from the following perspectives:
- Ethical—describe the ethical principles involved and expectations for all involved.
- Legal—define and argue the legal implications for each party. Explain health laws involved in your topic and a major court case that relates to your topic, as applicable.
- Regulatory compliance—examine regulatory standards and compliance involved.
- Evaluate and recommend how your facility can abide by state and federal laws on the topic. If no laws currently exist at the state or federal level, how should your facility proceed on the topic?
- Health reform—illustrate how this case and your role as administrator are different now due to changes in health law and expectations from health reform.
- Recommendations—argue at least three recommendations for your facility to deal with this topic
- Action plan for prevention—create an action plan for prevention explaining how you would implement these recommendations.
Your Legal and Ethical Dilemma Case Study report should meet the following structural requirements:
- Your report should be 13-15 pages in length (excluding cover page and references) and formatted according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements (Links to an external site.).
- Be sure to discuss and reference concepts taken from the assigned textbook reading and relevant research. You must include a minimum of ten (10) credible, academic or professional references beyond the text or other course materials. At least six (6) of these articles should come from external sources.
- Review the grading rubric to see how you will be graded for this assignment.
- Use correct terminology pertaining to the law and ethics.
- Utilize the following headings to organize the content in your work:
- Assessment,
- Recommendations, and
- Conclusion.
- Required Textbook:
Pozgar, G. D. (2020). Legal and ethical issues for health professionals (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. ISBN-1: 9781284144185
- **Below I attached the outline for the portfolio project please make sure to base the final project off of this outline. Use the references and incorporate more references from credible sources.**
Portfolio Project Description Outline: Legal and Ethical Dilemma Case Study
Title: It is ethically wrong to disclose the medical conditions of a patient
Thesis: Doctors have a legal and ethical responsibility on ensuring that their patient’s confidentiality is maintained, however, there are instances in which this information can be disclosed to save a life especially when there is a reason to believe that the condition is too serious.
- Introduction
- Description: Patients generally expect their physicians to protect their privacy when they are being treated. This presents a lot of ethical and legal dilemmas to the doctors when the conditions get worse because they must maintain their confidentiality. Doctors must ensure that they handle all the information carefully by taking considerable measures per their professional ethics. Issues can be raised by the patient or their family when they feel that their rights to confidentiality are violated. It is, therefore, necessary to define the different components of moral action in the medical field, for instance, moral sensitivity, moral judgment, ethical focus, and moral character.
- Thesis: Doctors have a legal and ethical responsibility on ensuring that their patient’s confidentiality is maintained, however, there are instances in which this information can be disclosed to save a life especially when there is a reason to believe that the condition is too serious.
- Assessment
- Ethical: This section will also outline the standard and expectations about this issue, as described in my professional code of ethics. The study will identify how ethical issues conflict in the case. The research will use a review by Sarafis et al. (2014) to discuss the dilemma that exists between respect of the autonomy of the patient in each clinical practice and the ability to instill hope. The core ethical principles involve respecting the patient’s privacy and confidentiality, providing them with information to make their own decisions, honoring their decisions. Doctors are also expected to act in the best interest of their patients, avoid causing suffering to the patients and treat patients fairly and equitably.
- Legal: The focus will be on confidentiality and informed consent laws and policies. This section will assess a patient’s legal ability to make a decision. A doctor cannot pronounce that the patient is legally incompetent. A study by Taylor (2015) will be useful in discussing the legal bases related to disclosure of confidential data of the patient for public health by determining whether it aims at improving or protecting health. Doctors and other physicians have a morals obligation when making decisions on whether to disclose private and confidential information. It will try to answer the question of whether it is moral to disclose the medical condition to a patient when it could harm his health.
- Regulatory compliance: This section will explore some of the regulations that govern the disclosure of a patient’s health information. The HIPAA privacy rule was established to standardize the disclosure of information. The HIPAA privacy rule will outline giving the patients the right to access their protected data. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Omnibus Rule) is also another regulatory that strengthens the disclosure requirements and sets associated liabilities. Despite the widespread use of Electronic Health Records, the cost, time, and complications related to request processes prevent patients from accessing their medical health condition (Lye et al., 2018). The Privacy Act of 1974 is another regulatory law that protects the rights of a patient in terms of determining the type of information collected from them as well as having access to it (Gostin et al., 2009). Confidentiality of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Patient Records highlights the required privacy provisions for treatment, prognosis, and diagnosis of the patient. It will outline the necessary communication during admission, instances of disclosing, and using health data of a person without the authorization of the patient (Manuel et al., 2013).
- Evaluation and Recommendations
The facility needs to ensure that its professionals comply with the federal and state statutes when handling a patient’s information. This section will assess how a facility should abide by federal and state laws. Federal and state laws do exist and the doctors must be always updated on the different regulations like the HIPAA privacy rule, HITECH Omnibus Rule, Privacy Act of 1974 among other regulations.
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- Health Reform: The changes in health laws increase the accountability of the administrators to be more careful in handling sensitive information. As an administrator, I believe that changes in health laws are meant to regulate public health at all levels. In this section, I will explore how the roles become different as more laws are introduced to regulate the disclosure of medical information. The expectations from the health reform are that the privacy and disclosure of health data should be reasonable. Health reforms must address the cultural expectations considering that patients can have different traditions on how they deal with disclosures. Physicians must learn how to disclose errors and confront a patient’s emotional dimensions as part of medical education. It is also expected that they apply ethical theories in determining the better course of action (Ghazal et al., 2014).
- Recommendations:
- Management of personal values to foster the application and guidance of professional ethics when deciding whether to disclose the information to the patient or not (Ulrich, 2012). It will also discuss seeking supervision by using values and personal reflection clarification process.
- Always ensure adherence to legal obligation at the expense of professional ethics as the former precedes the latter.
- The ability to distinguish between professional and personal behaviors as well as the obligation (Iacovino, 2002).
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- Action plan for prevention: This section will involve exploring how the recommendations above will be implemented. The action pans will involve providing regular training to physicians, establishing policies and confidentiality agreements and making sure that the regulatory compliance laws are readily accessible to the physicians.
- Conclusion: A patient’s medical information must be protected from disclosure unless they provide their consent. There are various regulatory mechanisms that physicians need to understand before disclosing any information. Federal and state laws must be followed to avoid any ethical and legal violations. Understanding these laws helps a medical professional to be aware of when to release information and when not to disclose. A health facility must be knowledgeable on how ethical and legal practices of professionalism are implemented to make sure that all health providers are aware of their responsibility towards their patients (Ghazal et al., 2014).
Legal and Ethical Dilemma Case Study
References
Baylis, F., & Downie, J. (2001). Professional recommendations: disclosing facts and values. Journal of medical ethics, 27(1), 20-24.
Ghazal, L., Saleem, Z., & Amlani, G. (2014). Resolving ethical dilemma: An application of a theoretical model. Khyber Medical University Journal, 6(3), 135.
Gostin, L. O., Levit, L. A., & Nass, S. J. (Eds.). (2009). Beyond the HIPAA privacy rule: enhancing privacy, improving health through research. National Academies Press.
Iacovino, L. (2002). Ethical principles and information professionals: theory, practice, and education. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 33(2), 57-74.
Lye, C. T., Forman, H. P., Gao, R., Daniel, J. G., Hsiao, A. L., Mann, M. K., & Krumholz, H. M. (2018). Assessment of US hospital compliance with regulations for patients’ requests for medical records. JAMA network open, 1(6), e183014-e183014.
Manuel, J. K., Newville, H., Larios, S. E., & Sorensen, J. L. (2013). Confidentiality protections versus collaborative care in the treatment of substance use disorders. Addiction science & clinical practice, 8(1), 13.
Sarafis, P., Tsounis, A., Malliarou, M., & Lahana, E. (2014). Disclosing the truth: a dilemma between instilling hope and respecting patient autonomy in everyday clinical practice. Global journal of health science, 6(2), 128.
Taylor, M. J. (2015). Legal bases for disclosing confidential patient information for public health: distinguishing between health protection and health improvement. Medical law review, 23(3), 348-374.
Ulrich, C. M. (2012). Nursing Ethics in Everyday Practice. Indianapolis, IN Sigma Theta Tau.
Legal and Ethical Dilemma Case Study