Financial Ethics in Healthcare: Principles and Practices Analysis

This essay delves into the critical realm of financial ethics within the healthcare sector, emphasizing the importance of ethical conduct for all practitioners. It highlights the need to avoid bribery, adhere to financial regulations, and prioritize patient well-being over financial gain. The essay explores the ethical decision-making process, emphasizing the importance of gathering facts, involving stakeholders, and differentiating between ethical and non-moral concerns. It also addresses the concept of moral blindness and its impact on decision-making, suggesting strategies to mitigate its effects. Furthermore, the essay provides an overview of ethical principles and their application in healthcare finance, aiming to guide healthcare managers in making sound, ethically grounded decisions that promote transparency, fairness, and patient-centered care. The essay draws on various sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

Running head: Financial ethics in healthcare 1
Financial ethics in healthcare
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Financial ethics in healthcare
Many organizations have overemphasized the need of observing the code of ethics in
service delivery. The need to be ethical in the financial sector of the health organizations is not
an exception. All the healthcare practitioners must be aware of the ethics in finance field to avoid
the intimidation of the patients. It is unethical to accept or give any bribe with the intention of
concealing the truth. Whether they bribe is expensive or cheap, and motives will be probably to
illegal the right purpose, and it should be avoided by all means.
The healthcare practitioners should abide by and obey the managerial and financial rules
and regulations of the health institutions they work for. If they work in a private sector, and the
system does not allow them to work in public institutions or in any other institution they should
obey and adhere to the policy (Monfardini, Barretta, & Ruggiero, 2013)
It is also unethical and illegal for a health practitioner to expose a patient to medical
procedures or investigation with the intention of getting more money without a clear medical
indication. It is not permissible to give or take any payment by the medical practitioners when
referring the patient to somewhere else. (Elçi, Karabay, & Akyüz, 2015)
Healthcare practitioners are not allowed to charge more fee to the patient than the one
determined by the authorities. If there are no set charges by the management, the custom should
be used. The fee charged to the patients should not be exaggerated. Under no circumstance is the
healthcare practitioners allowed to give priority to their social or financial interest ahead of the
health of the patient they are treating.

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2. In making the ethical decisions of an organization, the managers must ensure that all
facts are gathered, and the issue or situation at hand is explicitly defined. All the stakeholders
should be involved, and the possible solutions to the problem should be identified before the
decision is made. They must make sure that ethical principles are differentiated from the non-
moral concerns. Ethical drivers should be determined and ethical analyses conducted to avoid
making mistakes. There should be one moral principle versus non-moral interest and one noble
driver versus many tangential ethical principles. Healthcare managers should be careful in
coming up with the most suitable course of action that is based on philosophy. Implementation of
the identified course of action is quite essential for the success of an organization. The leaders
must ensure they act, monitor, evaluate and modify how matters are handled to get the best
performance (Ford, & Richardson, 2013)
Moral blindness is a state of insensitivity or unaware of issues to do with morality which
pertains oneself and one's relationships with others (Bauman, & Donskis, 2013). Moral
blindness can affect some steps of ethical decision-making process framework. For instance, it
can interfere with determining the ethical drivers, acting and evaluating as well as monitoring
and modifying. To avoid moral blindness in decision making, the healthcare managers should
know their team's strengths and weaknesses and how different individuals approach matters.
Managers should allocate duties based on where different people can perform best.

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References
Bauman, Z., & Donskis, L. (2013). Moral blindness: The loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity.
John Wiley & Sons.
Elçi, M., Karabay, M. E., & Akyüz, B. (2015). Investigating the mediating effect of ethical
climate on organizational justice and burnout: A study on financial sector. Procedia-
Social and Behavioral Sciences, 207, 587-597.
Ford, R. C., & Richardson, W. D. (2013). Ethical decision making: A review of the empirical
literature. In Citation classics from the Journal of Business Ethics (pp. 19-44). Springer,
Dordrecht.
Monfardini, P., Barretta, A. D., & Ruggiero, P. (2013, March). Seeking legitimacy: Social
reporting in the healthcare sector. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 54-66).
Elsevier.