A. Select an established company and analyze the company’s code of ethics by doing the following: 1. Analyze whether the code of ethics is lacking in the area of corporate social responsibility. The company that I chose to evaluate their code of ethics is called HG Clinic. HG Clinic’s code of ethics is not lacking in corporate social responsibility or CSR. The clinic has various statements on their website that indicate their focus with CSR. A couple of the statements include promote a culture where patients come first, promote a green environment and utilize all resources and demonstrate the highest level of ethical and rofessional conduct.
These statements definitely prove that the clinic is not lacking in the area of corporate social responsibility. I would recommend the clinic indicate on their website more detailed examples as to how they are completing these ethical statements for CSR. For example, an example as to how the clinic is promoting a green environment. The company could include on their website their recycling efforts. 2. Analyze whether the code of ethics is lacking in compliance with legal mandates. The company’s code of ethics is not lacking in compliance with legal mandates.
The company includes the following on their code of ethics. Proactively share information regarding business decisions, strategic intent and organizational priorities. The code of ethics statement also includes maintain appropriate policies and procedures and clinic employees should familiarize themselves with HG Clinics policies and procedures and follow them. When you go out to the policies and procedures each department has specific policies and procedures to follow. One example is health insurance portability and accountability act or HIPAA policy.
The policy protects individual’s medical records nd other personal health information. Employees need to follow this policy and protect patient’s medical records and other personal health information. Overall, I think that HG Clinic is not lacking in compliance with legal mandates. I do recommend that the clinic would include more on code of ethics about escalating a situation. The company’s code of ethics does recommend to proactively share information regarding business decisions, strategic intent and organization priorities. How to escalate ethical issues within the company could be recommended under that statement, but could be clearer.
a. Describe the implications of being noncompliant with legal mandates. The clinic could face many issues for being noncompliant with legal mandates. The clinic could face fines, loss of licenses and government funding removed. The clinic and providers need a license to practice medicine and failure to be compliant could have these licenses removed. The clinic’s reputation within the local society could be reflected negatively with not following legal mandates. Patients could be made aware of this and decide to seek medical attention at other clinics. The clinic could then have a reduction n their revenue due to patients seeking medical attention at other clinics.
b. Describe two legal or ethical safeguards your chosen company has in place or could put into place. The clinic has in place a medical and legal risk manager. The individual is in place in the clinic to help the clinic and employees follow legal and ethical policies. The manager handles patient care experience forms which are concerns from patients or employees. The manager escalates them as needed or takes them to the board of directors for the final decision. The company also has an annual training program that amiliarizes employees with the company’s code of ethics. Employees are walked through different ethical scenarios and also can become familiar with the company’s ethical policies and procedures.
3. Analyze whether the code of ethics facilitates the development of an ethical culture. I do think the company’s code of ethics does facilitate the development of an ethical culture. The first reason I identified is that the company advises what the clinic wants to do to achieve this specific goal. The company then breaks down that goal to the employee level. The employee can be clear on how the mployee can personally achieve that goal.
For example, the company has a goal of promote a culture of where patients come first. The statement is then broken down to the employee level of keep patients at the heart of my work. Iidentified some other statements in the code of ethics that facilitate the development of an ethical culture. One statement that I identified is be respectful of patients, communicate in a caring manner and actively listen to their needs. The second statement that l identified is to promote a positive work culture and foster an environment that promotes teamwork, mutual espect and open and honest communication. I believe both of these statements help the clinic achieve an ethical culture.
4. Analyze how an employee would raise an ethical concern in this organization. a. Describe three resources available to employees. One resource available for an employee to raise an ethical concern is to their manager. The employee could speak to their manager to escalate the issue or point out what they think is unethical. The manager could provide more information to the employee that would answer their question to whether the concern is unethical.
If they decide it is unethical the manager could escalate this up the chain of command. The second resource available would be that of human resource. If the employee determines something is unethical human resource would be an alternate instead of the employee’s manager. The employee could be determining that something their manager is doing is unethical. The employee could be put in a situation where they had to escalate to their manager. Human resource would be another option that the employee could escalate their concern. The third resource available would be patient comment cards.
Patients and employees can fill out anonymous comment cards. The cards are collected by the company’s marketing department. Marketing department sometimes takes action on the cards or distributes them to the appropriate department. The department then follows up with the marketing department on the resolution to the concern. b. Discuss which resources you would most likely use. The resources most likely used would be that of your manager or human resources. The company has created a wonderful ethical culture where issues brought to these leaders would be kept confidence an escalated appropriately.
The reason they are selected as the resources is the manager and human resource could act quickly on the ethical situation to improve the situation. 5. Include the code of ethics you analyzed in part A by copying and pasting the code into a separate document. Please include this document as a separate attachment. I have attached this in a separate document labeled code of ethics.
B. Develop a policy that instructs employees how to address unethical conduct observed at work by doing the following: 1. Discuss the conditions that would have to be present for an mployee to blow the whistle about unethical conduct observed at work. I think the conditions could vary from employee to employee. One employee might consider to blow the whistle about an unethical conduct if they identify that someone is not telling the truth. Another example could be if an employee determines that someone at the clinic is not respecting the patients and fellow employees. I would think that for an employee to blow the whistle about an unethical conduct would be if it did not improve through the normal escalation procedures.