Ethical Health Care Scenerios

Ethical Health Care Scenarios

Anna Beall

HCS/335

William Bross

11/07/2016

Ethical Health Care Scenarios                                                                                                         1

Scenario 1: Medical coding in a physician's practice

        The pressure of getting the maximum payment for services rendered could cause a coder to manipulate or falsify documentation. This is not only illegal it is unethical and could have severe consequences. An action such as this could not only affect the medical coder but the physician and the entire practice. It could result in heavy fines and even possibly the closure of the physician’s practice which in turn will affect the rest of the employees. Not to mention that it affects not just those that work inside the physician’s office but the patients and the insurance companies are affected as well. So, you can see how an action such as this would not be a good thing for anyone. The practice should in no way ask their employees or pressure them into doing something that is unethical and illegal. It will not help the revenue projections if everyone loses their job.

Scenario 2: Administration of patient medications in the hospital setting

There could have been a couple of different reasons that the clinician might have chosen not to report the incident. The ramifications of the unethical act of choosing not to report incident could have come out of fear and embarrassment. Fear of the consequences like the possible death of a patient, legal action, or the embarrassment of being right out of school and getting the dosage wrong. The clinician might be scared of what reporting the incident might cause like the patient finding out and wanting to sue the medical unit or the clinician for malpractice. Maybe the clinician is just scared of being fired on the first day. No matter what the reason could be it would be unethical to make the decision not to report the incident. There are people’s lives that we are talking about and the safety and security of the patient. After all is that not why we go to school to help patients and provide them with excellent medical care?