Ethics and Management Dilemmas in Healthcare
As a healthcare leader, what are the appropriate steps to take if you need help on a project?
Healthcare leaders need to advocate for a two-way communication to seek employees’ new ideas when implementing new projects. Individuals require sufficient information to help in mobilizing personal resources towards the planned project, and to act promptly where necessary. The management should also take a step of making moral decisions as well as to understand the ethical implications of building health information confidentiality amongst the participants in the project implementation. The leader needs to consider the changes in the information technology and analyze any conflicting issues related to disaster planning of the project, the medical errors associated with project implementation as well as other conflicting ethical demands.
According to Manser (2009), leaders need to build teamwork that helps to prevent and solve the management errors. Gaining of the public trust is vital since it can help the leaders to learn from the emerging clinical and management errors, and find better solutions. For the project to succeed, it is necessary to distinguish various aspects that relate to the general management, ethical, social as well as the legal errors and find better solutions to merge the gaps.
What steps did Jack Moore (the CIO for Heartland Healthcare System) bypass with his oversight of the IT project?
Some of the steps that the CIO for Heartland Healthcare System bypass include; poor and inadequate assessment of the risks associated with the ongoing IT project. Jack Moore ought to have provided an accurate assessment of the investment risks that would help to create transparency as an oversight of the project is ongoing. Consequently, the project required a frequent data update at least on a monthly basis, which the administration officials took with laxity as opposed to the requirement (Hofmann, Perry, and Davidson, 2010). The irregular and unpredictable updates could not reflect an accurate risk information required for the project. In addition, Jack Moore also bypassed to take active risks, which include staffing changes that show the impacts or probability of the unsolved threats that limit the success of the IT project.
As a future healthcare leader, what lessons will you take away from the study of this case?
It is evident that in every project implementation, there must exist shortcomings. A future leader, therefore, should take prior precaution on how to deal with such issues on time. For any project to succeed, the project leaders should incorporate teamwork at its initial stage up to its completion. Building trust for oneself and encouraging both vertical and horizontal communication can serve best when implementing change.
References
Hofmann, P. B., Perry, F., & Davidson, R. J. (2010). Management mistakes in healthcare: Identification, correction, and prevention. Cambridge University Press.
Manser, T. (2009). Teamwork and patient safety in dynamic domains of healthcare: a review of the literature. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica, 53(2), 143-151.