Managing the conflict between individual needs and group interests--ethical leadership in health care organizations.
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This paper derives from a grounded theory study of how Medical Directors working within the UK National Health Service manage the moral quandaries that they encounter as leaders of health care organizations. The reason health care organizations exist is to provide better care for individuals through providing shared resources for groups of people. This creates a paradox at the heart of health care organization, because serving the interests of groups sometimes runs counter to serving the needs of individuals. The paradox presents ethical dilemmas at every level of the organization, from the boardroom to the bedside. Medical Directors experience these organizational ethical dilemmas most acutely by virtue of their position in the organization. As doctors, their professional ethic obliges them to put the interests of individual patients first. As executive directors, their role is to help secure the delivery of services that meet the needs of the whole patient population. What should they do when the interests of groups of patients, and of individual patients, appear to conflict? The first task of an ethical healthcare organization is to secure the trust of patients, and two examples of medical ethical leadership are discussed against this background. These examples suggest that conflict between individual and population needs is integral to health care organization, so dilemmas addressed at one level of the organization inevitably re-emerge in altered form at other levels. Finally, analysis of the ethical activity that Medical Directors have described affords insight into the interpersonal components of ethical skill and knowledge. (+info)
Quality monitoring and management in commercial health plans.
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OBJECTIVE: To examine the current state of quality monitoring and management activities of US health plans. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. METHODS: We surveyed medical directors of 252 commercial HMOs (96% response rate) drawn from 41 nationally representative markets in the United States. We randomly sampled healthcare markets with at least 100,000 HMO enrollees. The markets in our sampling frame include an estimated 91% of US HMO enrollees and represent 78% of the metropolitan population. RESULTS: There was near-universal collection of data at the health plan level for each of the 7 outpatient measures we examined (ranging from 92.1% of health plans that collect data on hypertension control and cholesterol management (see p. 379) to 99.2% that collect data on patient satisfaction). There also was substantial data collection at the level of the individual provider or physician group (ranging from 50.4% for hypertension control to 81.4% for diabetes care); this was more common in health plans that primarily use capitation to reimburse primary care physicians. Health plans that collected data typically fed these data back to physician groups, but public reporting to enrollees was infrequent. CONCLUSIONS: Almost all health plans measured their performance on multiple indicators of quality. The majority of health plans also collected data at the level of the individual physician or group and used these data in quality improvement activities, but not in public reporting. Thus, adoption of physician-level performance measurement and reporting by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will likely entail a major change for individual physicians. (+info)
Injury data in British Columbia: policy maker perspectives on knowledge transfer.
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Provincial and regional decision makers in the injury prevention field were interviewed in British Columbia (B.C.) to obtain their views about best processes for the transfer or dissemination of relevant data. These decision makers (n = 13) indicated that data should provide them with a holistic and comprehensive picture to support their decision processes. In addition, they felt information about injury types and rates should be linked backward to determinants or causes and forward to consequences or outcomes. This complete chain of data is needed for planning and evaluating health promotion interventions. It was also felt that data providers needed to devote more effort to fostering effective receptor capacity, so that injury prevention professionals will be better able to understand, interpret and apply the data. These findings can likely be generalized to other jurisdictions and policy areas, and offer additional insight into the practicalities of knowledge transfer and exchange in researcher/decision maker partnerships. (+info)
Survey of attitude of physicians on updates in the management of anemia in chronic kidney disease patients.
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We aimed in this study to assess the opinion of medical directors of dialysis centers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) about updates of strategies for treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). A questionnaire was sent to the medical directors of the 174 active dialysis centers in the KSA including centers under the Ministry of Health (MOH) (67 %), the governmental non-MOH sector (12%) and private hospitals (21 %) that together care for a population of more than 11,300 chronic dialysis patients. The study was performed between November 2008 and March 2009. A total of 143 of the 174 (82.1%) medical directors answered the questionnaire. This covered 9563 (84%) dialysis patients in the KSA. There were 95 (68.8%) respondents who believed that the mechanism of action of ESAs is due to both blood concentration and direct action on the stem cells that form red cells. Only 81 (57%) respondents believed that the half-life of the short-acting ESAs is less than one day, 67 (46.9%) believed the half-life of darbepoetin is 2-4 days, and 52 (36.6%) believed the half-life of CERA is 5-10 days; 79 (55.6%) respondents believed that the interval of dosing of darbepoetin is once biweekly, and 92 (71.9%) believed that the interval of dosing of CERA is once a month. There were 110 (76.9%) respondents who believed the CKD should receive a long-acting than short-acting ESAs for the more stable hemoglobin levels, 64 (44.8%) believed that pharmacodynamics of the CERA are better than other ESAs and warrant its use over all of them, and 115 (80.6%) believed that the target hemoglobin is 11-13 g/dL in CKD patients is well established. Finally, 65 (51.5%) respondents would request more than 30% of the stock of ESAs in the future as short-acting ESAs vs 71 (55%) for darbepoetin and 40 (37.4%) for CERA. There were no statistically significant differences among the respondents according to their affiliations (MOH, non MOH and private sector) on any of the issues in the questionnaire. We conclude that our results showed inadequate awareness of the medical directors of the dialysis centers in the KSA of the mechanisms of action of ESAs and the new agents such as the CERA. However, they were well informed about the limits of the targeted hemoglobin levels and showed a trend toward using the long-acting ESAs. (+info)
Alternative approaches to ambulatory training: internal medicine residents' and program directors' perspectives.
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Cholinesterase inhibitor and N-methyl-D-aspartic acid receptor antagonist use in older adults with end-stage dementia: a survey of hospice medical directors.
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Organizational and market influences on physician performance on patient experience measures.
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Ethics and professionalism in the pediatric curriculum: a survey of pediatric program directors.
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