Ethics Committees: Guidance for Business and Patient Best Practices
Jeannine LeCompte, Compliance Research Specialist
The long-term health care profession often places its practitioners at the very forefront of dealing with difficult life-changing situations—and ethics committees provide important guidance in the areas of business and patient best practices.
There is sometimes confusion between the roles of an “ethics committee” and a “compliance and ethics committee,” and it is for this reason that an overview of both sectors of operation can be extremely helpful in guiding administrators and staff alike.
The difference can be summed up in the definition of ethics and healthcare ethics. Ethics are the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior, and healthcare ethics are a set of moral principles, beliefs, and values which provide guidance in the provision of medical care.
The American Medical Association (AMA) says that ethics committees “offer assistance in addressing ethical issues that arise in patient care and facilitate sound decision-making that respects participants’ values, concerns, and interests.” Put another way, an ethics committee should provide a forum for review and discussion of ethical and moral issues relative to resident care, while promoting and protecting the rights of residents.
In 1983, only 1 percent of hospitals in the US had ethics committees, but by 2001, this had increased to over 90 percent. This was the direct result of the 1984 endorsement of the concept by the AMA, and today, ethics committees are the primary mechanisms for managing ethical issues in clinical care in America.
The AMA advises that a compliance and ethics committee, in addition to “facilitating decision-making in individual cases,” should “assist ethics-related educational programming and policy development within their institutions.”
In the long-term care environment, this means specifically focusing on efforts to avoid fraud, waste, and abuse.
In summary, ethics committees are to:
- Develop interventions to protect patient rights
- Propose solutions to real or imagined conflicts
- Modify patient care protocols to improve quality
- Provide staff with ethical education and develop strategies to prevent future ethical issues
- Minimize the risk of legal liability
