Five Ethical Values to Guide Health System Reform

A values framework for health system reform.

Health System Reform in the United States

In 2010, the United States adopted its first-ever comprehensive set of health system reforms in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Implementation of the law, though politically contentious and controversial, has now reached a stage where reversal of most elements of the law is no longer feasible. The controversial portions of the law that expand affordable health insurance coverage to most U.S. cit...

Ethical Issues in Health Care Reform

The subject of health care reform is much in our minds these days. On the one hand, it is difficult to find anyone who admits to being opposed to health care reform. On the other hand, I think we may all easily foresee it is going to be extremely difficult to come up with a health care reform program that will satisfy everyone. So, if almost everyone agrees it needs fixing, why is it so difficu...

Recent Iranian Health System Reform: An Operational Perspective to Improve Health Services Quality

The operational management of healthcare services is expected to directly touch patient experiences. Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MoHME) for the first time, as such, has sought to improve the operational management of healthcare delivery within a reform agenda by setting benchmarks for ‘number of visit per hour’ and waiting time in outpatient clinics of about 700 affiliated...

What Critical Ethical Values Guide Strategic Planning Processes in Health Care Organizations?

This case explores a fictitious hospital's use of co-creation to make a decision about redesign of inpatient units as a first step in incorporating stakeholder input into creation of governing policies. We apply a "procedural fairness" framework to reveal that conditions required for an ethical decision about space redesign were not met by using clinician and patient focus groups to obtain stak...