Social Responsibility: Health Care In Our Community

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Social Responsibility
Shannon Klein

Main Hospital has proven itself to be a leader in health care in our community. We pride ourselves with providing the best care to all patients to better the health of our patients. We are also very concerned with ethics and our responsibility to our community. As health care providers we take an oath to do no harm but ethics goes beyond just how we care for our patients. We need to ensure that we are not only a leader in health care but also a responsible and ethical leader in our community. Business ethics is how we deal with our patients, our community, our world and our employees within the organization. We need to be concerned with our ethics as it will enhance our business performance,
it will meet the demands of our stakeholders, it will make us comply with legal requirements, it will prevent or minimize harm and it promotes personal morality within ourselves and our employees. Why should businesses be concerned with social responsibility? One reason is that researchers have determined that there exists a significant relationship between corporate financial performance and ethical performance. That is when a business acts responsibly to its community, they are rewarded with financial gains. A business is able to attract and keep customers, they can attract and retain the best employees, they increase sales and build customer loyalty, they strengthen relationships with suppliers and enhance good will throughout the community they serve. Lack of ethics in turn cost businesses money. In fact it is calculated that the financial damage to a company can be 7.5 times the amount of penalties imposed by the government. In other words, the fines by the government are bad but the real damage is the amount of money that is lost by losing valuable employees and losing valuable customers. The second reason to be socially responsible is because there are laws in place to protect consumers from unethical businesses and a business who breaks these laws will be fined and can be found criminally negligent. Thirdly, it is just the right thing to do for yourself, your business and your customers. First lets examine our environmental impact on our community and if we are practicing ethical leadership. Safety has to be goal number one and we are committed to providing a safe environment for our patients. Some examples of this are our excellent security guards who on a daily basis provide a safe environment for our patients, utilizing best practices such as performing time outs before every surgery to ensure we are performing right surgery on right patient and that all pertinent information is known to the team, employing digital technology to scan patient armbands to ensure that any labs drawn or medications given are to the right patient at the right time and in the right way, and providing informed consents to all our patients before any procedure is done on them. These are just a few ways that we are consistently providing safety for our patients. Next lets examine how we are impacting our environment. As a large institution we generate a lot of waste and hazardous waste. This impacts our community as it puts a burden on the city, state and country to try to provide ways to get rid of all of this waste. There are ways we could improve the amounts of waste we generate. Hazardous waste such as human blood, and body parts have to be incinerated. The smoke from the incinerators pollute the air and cause air quality issues in our community. In order, to minimize this we need to ensure that only hazardous waste is being put in the red bags for incineration. According to JACHO and OSHA, government regulatory agencies, we need to provide receptacles with red bags in every patient care area for health care workers to dispose of hazardous waste. These red bags are then emptied into a bin that is taken to the incinerator to be burned. I have noticed that many workers are using the red bag bins as the general waste receptacles and put things into them that should not be there. The only things that should be placed in the red bins are left over human waste such as fat tissue, discarded placentas and blood saturated items. Items that only have a little bit of blood on them do not need to be placed in the red bins and items that are not human waste also do not need to be put into the red bins. We need to educate staff on this and we need to make the red bins smaller and more out of the way so that they are not utilized for general waste. By minimizing the amount of red bags we are incinerating we can help our community by releasing less smoke into the air to help improve air quality. As a large institution that is operating 7 days in a week, 24 hours a day, we use a lot of energy. There are ways we could limit our energy usage. This would benefit our community by not utilizing valuable resources for no reason. It would also help lower our costs that would benefit our financial bottom line. We need to ensure that rooms or spaces that are not being utilized have the lights turned off and the thermostats lowered. In large waiting rooms or public bathrooms we could install automatic lights that turn on when someone enters and turn off when they leave. This would help to lower our overall energy usage. By reducing our energy usage we would save money and save valuable resources for the community. We could also look at recycling.
We use a lot of plastic products and Styrofoam Many of these products should and can be recycled. We should look into the possibility of recycling IV fluid bags and tubing as well as many wrappers and bags the products are kept in. If it is possible to recycle these items, we would be reducing the amount of waste that we are currently putting into the landfills, thus reducing the burden on the community for getting rid of it. We offer coffee and water to our patients and family members. There is a lot of waste generated from the use of the Styrofoam cups that we currently are using. One way to reduce this would be to give every patient a reusable water pitcher that could be used for the length of their stay. By each patient have a reusable pitcher, we would use less Styrofoam We could even use pitchers that could be washed and sanitized by the kitchen staff so that would reduce greatly the amount of garbage that is going to our landfills. We would need to find out if the added energy cost of washing and sanitizing the pitchers and cups would be more beneficial for our community but if it is, it would be a great way to limit the amount of non recyclables we are putting in our community
landfills. Besides environmental concerns, we have financial ethics as well. As a large organization, we generate millions of dollars every year. It is important that we take care to account for our income, and our expenditures in order to provide the ongoing care for our community that is our most important goal. Only about a month ago, a former employee was arrested for embezzling millions of dollars from our hospital in about a 10 year time frame. That was in all the newspapers and will cost our hospital more in the sense that the community will question how we are managing our funds and may not trust us with their care. We need to comply with government regulations such as the Sarbanes Oxley Act in order to ensure that our financial are accurate and accounted for. In a large organization, if managers and executives are not consistently looking over the books, it is easier for individuals to defraud our company and our community. Every department needs to have a director who is auditing the financial and then providing those audits to the CFO and CEO who then in turn look over the financial for the entire hospital. This will help to eliminate fraudulent activity. It is equally important to educate our staff to the importance of wisely using supplies and to be vigilant in watching for fraudulent activity. We need to provide a way for them to voice their concerns about such activity without fear of punishment. So why do ethical problems occur and how can we encourage an environment of morality? The reasons for unethical behavior for personal gain or selfish interest, competitive pressures on profits or the need to impress stakeholders, conflicts of interest or doing what is best for you not the company, and cross cultural contradictions or having differing ethical standards based on individuals culture. Other cultures may not think certain things are wrong or unethical. It is important for us to educate our multicultural employee base on what is expected of them in this culture and why. The core elements of ethical character and those we want to instill in everyone at Main Hospital managing our values which include caring for our customers and community, providing a safe environment for our employees and customers, and treating everyone with respect.
In addition we need to maintain a sense of spirituality in the work place. One that treats all people with respect regardless of religious beliefs but one that encourages everyone to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated. Four ways we can analyze ethical problems at Main Hospital is through our virtues or what we value, utility, benefits outweigh costs, rights, and justice. First look at what we value, if it goes against our values then it is unethical or wrong. If it doesn 't care for our customers, employees or community then it goes against our values. Second, utility, if it doesn 't benefit the company then it is probably unethical. An example would be an employee using hospital supplies for personal use. This costs the hospital money and serves no benefit for the hospital so we can say this is unethical. Thirdly
rights, is what we are doing protect basic human rights. If we violate our customers or employees rights then what we are doing is unethical. And lastly justice, is it fair? Are we treating are employees and customers fairly? We need to be treating all employees equally, compensating them accordingly and providing a safe work environment for them. In the same way, we need to treat all our customers equally regardless of their ability to pay and providing the same exceptional service to each and every one. People can act ethical because first it benefits them and the company, is produces benevolence and friendship, and it promotes personal morality. In order to ensure that Main Hospital acts in a ethical way, their should be safeguards in place. We have a compliance based approach that we currently use to ensure that we are meeting all the legal requirements for the hospital in order to comply with OSHA and JACHO. We also could put into place a corporate comprehensive ethics program that would include a commitment from top management and would involve them in the ethics policy. It would include a policy of ethics to be complied by every employee. They would be held responsible for abiding by the policy. We would need to have a way for employees and customers to report violations in ethical policy without retribution. In addition we would need to have employee training programs to instill our values and educate on the new policy to all employees. Then we would need managers of each department to do audits on a monthly basis on how well the department is complying with the ethical policy. They would also need to do re-education on employees who are not compliant as to why they are not and to make it clear that they need to be. By holding each employee responsible for their own ethical behavior based upon the policy of the company we would be initiating an integrity based approach. We could even give awards out at the end of each year to departments or individuals that have performed in an exceptionally ethical way and have helped the company to be socially responsible. In order for an organization to remain viable, they must have financial stability. Main Hospital is a non-profit organization so it is important that we continue to look at the financials to ensure we are continuing to meet our mission. Our mission is to provide exceptional healthcare to our community but in order to do that we need to be able to make money to pay for the programs, employees and equipment to meet that mission. First, there needs to be a full understanding of what exactly our mission is. We need to then look at all the activites that we do to determine if they are helping us to meet our mission. If we find any activities that are not helping, we need to eliminate those. We also need to assess how well each activity helps us to meet our mission and goals and those that are not really helping that much should be eliminated as well. We need to find ways to cut our expenses by maybe negotiating better contracts with suppliers, restructuring our debt, getting better interest rates on our loans and looking at getting lower costs for our benefits. After doing all this we can compare a 5 year forecast with and without the cuts. This should help to solidfy support for the needed cuts to help keep the organization financially stable. Part of social responsibility is being a good steward of our finances so we can be around to offer exceptional healthcare to our community. A business or organization does not work indepently from the values of its workers. So it is imperative if the organization is to remain viable that values of the managers and those of the employees are similar and should match with the organization as a whole. Our mission statement needs to be a shared mission with each and every employee. They need to see that management shares their values and that we are serious about what we say we believe. Also to remain viable, we need to be complying with all regulatory agencies like OSHA and JACHO. We need to ensure that we are following all federal laws and abiding by all the rules. Our leadership needs to be sure that our financials are being looked over appropriately under the Sarbanes Oxley act, that is seperate people are making the suppliers contracts and paying the bills and finally that the CFO is looking over all the financials each and every month. Our employees, need to be part of the auditing system that ensures that we are meeting all JACHO and OSHA requirements. They also need to know that we take social responsibility seriously and that we welcome suggestions to help be a better steward of our finances and our environment while still offering exceptional healthcare to our community. They also need to be able to voice criticism or turn in suspected violators without fear of retribution. Being an ethical company also by definition means following laws. It is important that every department within Main Hospital is following all applicable laws for their unit. For instance we need to insure that all healthcare providers are appropriately licensed and that all accounting personal are also. We need to ensure we are meeting all JACHO and OSHA requirements as well as keeping up with all core measures that have been federally mandated. We also need to ensure that we are keeping up with digital record keeping to ensure that all health records for all patients are digital per federal requirements. In addition, we need to ensure we are complying with all Medicare and Medicaid requirements so we can ensure quick and accurate payments to the hospital. We also need to make sure our HHCAPS score remains high to ensure all payments are made as well. If we act in an ethical way, this should not be an issue. Financially, we need to be complying with all federal laws including the Sarbanes Oxley act. This means that we need to have a system in place so seperate people are doing the ordering and seperate people are paying the bills and all financials need to be approved by the CFO and the CEO. By complying with all laws, we are showing our community that we are serious about being a socially responsible company. In conclusion, we need to keep doing what we are doing to abide by the all the regulations of OSHA and JACHO. Many of these concerns are making sure that hallways remain clear of clutter, that things are properly labeled and put away in their proper place, that nurses are making sure to clearly document all care on patients, that nurses and staff are properly licensed, that nurses are ensuring that when giving medication that they have the right patient, right medication at the right time and given in the right way, and that all patients have been given informed consent prior to any procedure being performed. In addition they need to be making sure that there are time outs being completed before any procedure to ensure that we have the right patient, and we are doing the right procedure. There are many regulations that imposed upon our hospital and we have been very good at abiding by them all and we need to continue to do so. We need to introduce an ethical policy and educate all employees on our values and the new policy. We need to have a commitment from upper management to enforce this new policy and to set the tone for employees to follow. We need to include in our new policy the environmental concerns listed above. We do a great job of caring for our customers and making sure there health is taken care of but we also need to make sure we are also caring for our environment by being environmentally conscious. It will save our environment and help us to also save money and will show to our community how much we care for them as a whole. This in turn will help us to get new customers and retain the ones we already have. By being socially responsible, we are showing our employees and our community that we care.

References:
Lawrence, A., & Weber, J. (2011). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy (Thirteenth ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.