...“It is a mistake to reject religious principles in favour of secular/ethical principles for guidance in medical ethics” A religion such as Christianity has rules and guidelines that are made by the Church using teachings and bible scriptures so that Christians can live a moral life to achieve an afterlife. An example of this is the Ten Commandments that was given to Moses which contain laws such as ‘thy shall not steal’ and ‘thy shall not kill’. These laws were giving to Moses so that people would do the right and good things. Secular principles such as Utilitarianism and laws made by the government for non-religious people to use as guidance to outline the right and wrong. Within this essay, I will examine how religion is a part of the rationing and prioritising sector when it comes to healthcare resources as well as the advantages and disadvantages when using non-secular principles when distributing resources. Beauchamp and Childress’ Four Principles of Biomedical Ethics are respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. This is one of the ethical principles that are being used by the NHS. The four principles are there to be used equally and fair when choosing the best decision for a situation of medical treatment. Autonomy means that you should respect a patient’s decision by giving them all the information they need to make their financial decision. Autonomy suggests that patients should be the ones to make their decisions and not healthcare professionals...
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...B33CNS Course Assignment What is the economic impact of depression in adults in the United Kingdom and how should medicines be used to reduce that economic impact? According to World Health Organization (WHO), depression is the second most common cause of disability in the world and it will be the biggest health burden out of all wellbeing issues on society both economically and sociologically within 20 years [1]. This statement is indeed disheartening but what actually is depression that it will have such a great impact? Depression refers to a state of low mood and presence of negative affect which is usually associated with a range of emotional, cognitive, physical and behavioral symptoms [2] . These include two core symptoms as in persistent depressed mood plus loss of interest in most activities and several other symptoms such as significant weight change due to increased or reduced appetite, sleeping disorder, psychomotor agitation, fatigue, reduced ability to think or concentrate, feelings of worthlessness, guilt or inappropriate grief as well as recurrent thought of death or suicide. There is no definite cause of depression but some risk factors which can trigger depression have been identified. First, one’s family history of mental disorder. American Psychiatric Association expresses that if one identical twin is diagnosed with depression, the other twin has a 70% chance of getting the same problem [3] . Next, females are more susceptible to get depression...
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...Take Home Final Examination Hamline University School of Law 2013 Spring Semester Exam Number __ __ __ __ __ Instructor : Course Title : Section : Format : Total Time for Exam : Total Number of Pages : Professor Thaddeus Pope Bioethics & Law Law 9558, Section 1 Take Home 72 hours 13 Pages Reference Materials Allowed Open Book (all reference materials allowed) Take-Home Exam Instructions 1. Please know your correct Spring 2013 exam number and include this number at the top of each page of your exam answer (for example, in a header). To locate your exam number, go to www.hamline.edu and follow the steps below. A graphic guide to locating your exam number is attached to these instructions. Click on Logins in the header. Go to Piperline Log in to the secure area Enter your Student ID and PIN Click Student Services Click Registration Click Student Detail Schedule Select the appropriate term from the drop down menu Exam Numbers are listed below Total Credit Hours at the top of the page 2. Confirm that you are using and have typed the correct exam number on your exam document. 3. You may download the exam from the course TWEN site any time after 12:01 a.m. on Monday, April 29, 2013. All exams must be submitted within 72 hours of download. But, in any case, all exams must be submitted by the end of the final exam period, i.e. by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, May 13, 2013. Therefore, you will want to download...
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...The Economics of Health Care Quality and Medical Errors Charles Andel, Stephen L. Davidow, Mark Hollander, and David A. Moreno Charles Andel, MBA, BSRT, is Manager of Radiology Quality and Compliance at Loyola University Medical Center and a graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business MBA in Healthcare Management program. He may be reached at cjandel@lumc.edu. Stephen L. Davidow, MBA, APR, is a health care marketing and communications professional with a strong focus on quality and patient safety. He is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business MBA in Healthcare Management program. He may be reached at stephen@davidowcommunciations.com or 708-284-2300. Mark Hollander, MBA, is a financial manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs and graduate of Loyola University Chicago ’s Quinlan School of Business MBA in Healthcare Management program. David A. Moreno, MBA, is a biotechnology business analyst and graduate of the Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business MBA in Healthcare Management program. He may be reached at dmoreno1@gmail.com. Hospitals have been looking for ways to improve quality and operational efficiency and cut costs for nearly three decades, using a variety of quality improvement strategies. However, based on recent reports, approximately 200,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors including facility-acquired conditions and millions may experience errors. In 2008, medical...
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...ASAN AUTISTIC SELF ADVOCACY NETWORK POLICY BRIEF • MARCH 2013 Organ Transplantation and People with I/DD: A Review of Research, Policy and Next Steps Ari Ne’eman, Autistic Self Advocacy Network Steven Kapp, University of California, Los Angeles Caroline Narby, Autistic Self Advocacy Network Introduction Since organ transplantation was introduced as a viable treatment option, people with disabilities have faced significant barriers to accessing the life-saving procedure. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability by entities receiving federal funds, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 extended this protection more broadly across other areas of society. However, it has historically been difficult to enforce federal civil rights law within the area of medical decision-making. Due to the lack of medical knowledge on the part of the average patient or family member, people with I/DD often face little recourse when denied transplantation or even referral for consideration for such a procedure. In the last twenty years, some progress has been made on this issue, yet the need for further action on the part of activists and policymakers remains exceptionally clear. Background … it has historically been difficult to enforce federal civil rights law within the area of medical decision-making. People with I/DD and Organ Transplantation: A History of Discrimination In 1995, Sandra Jensen, a 34-year...
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...care provider and £12 million to the participants and this account to a total of £33 million. This is based on a time off centre-based intervention as defined in the Cost Utility Analysis (CUA). The ERS includes an additional 3900 people becoming physically active, 51 cases of Congestive Heart Disease avoided, 16 cases of stroke avoided, 86 cases of diabetes avoided, 152 additional people in health states free from Congestive Heart Disease, stroke or diabetes and an increase of 800 Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). ERS has a positive impact on the management of mental health, metabolic disease, cancer, musculoskeletal conditions and productivity through reduced absenteeism at work. There are some possible adverse affects in this study which are considered rare, but could still counteract some of the positive consequences of ERS. Based on the measurable costs and benefits, ERS is expected to result in a net gain benefit of 0.008 QALYs, with an incremental cost per QALY of ERS of approximately...
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....WHAT IS QUALITY OF LIFE AND HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE? A REVIEW OF THE CONCEPTS AND SOME ATTEMPTS AT MEASUREMENT Quality of life research, then, spans a range of topics, from quality of life in the last year of life (Lawton et al. 1990) to quality of life in urban environments (Rogerson et al. 1989). As was illustrated earlier, quality of life is an amorphous concept, that has a usage across many disciplines -- geography, literature, philosophy, health economics, advertising, health promotion and the medical and social sciences (e.g. sociology and psychology). It is a vague concept; it is multidimensional and theoretically incorporates all aspects of an individual's life. Quality of life has also been defined as the `output' of the inputs of the physical and the spiritual (Liu 1974); as the degree to which a person accomplishes life goals (Cella and Cherin 1987); and even quantified crudely as a formula in which quality of life (QL) is a product of one's natural endowment (NE) and the effort made on one's behalf by the family (H) and society (S), such that QL ]] NE ]] H ]] S (Shaw 1977). The meaning of the concept of quality of life is thus arguably dependent on the user of the term, his or her understanding of it, and his or her position and agenda in the social and political structure (Edlund and Tancredi 1985): `Quality of life is a vague and ethereal entity, something that many people talk about, but which nobody very clearly knows what to do about' (Campbell...
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...The Health Care reform bill has the creation of an Institute for Comparative Effectiveness as a key component with the hope of improving quality and reducing health care costs. The institute would have the authority to make official determinations of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of medical treatments, procedures, drugs, and medical devices. President Obama's initial nominee as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), has likewise proposed the creation of a supremely powerful Federal Health Board, which would have similar authority to make decisions that would be binding on health plans and providers financed by federal taxpayers, and potentially on private health insurance coverage.[2] While Senator Daschle has withdrawn his name from Senate consideration, the concept of such a board or institute is strongly indicative of the Obama Administration's policy orientation toward centralized health policy decision-making. Last year, congress has passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1, which would establish a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The bill provides $1.1 billion for the new council and delegate spending authority to the HHS Secretary to investigate the effectiveness of different drugs and medical devices.[3] Of course, there is no reason why anyone should not have access to information on what works and what doesn't. There is no reason...
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...Telenursing: Is It in my Future? Devry University Telenursing: Is it in My Future I remember the first time I heard of telenursing. It was about 4 years ago and I was still new to home health nursing. My director informed the office that we would be having an in-service on a new telehealth monitoring device we would be using for our high risk patients. We were shown how to operate the monitors and was demonstrated all of its capabilities. The telephone based devices had an interactive voice response system that could remotely monitor a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, O2 saturation, weight and blood sugar via a telephone connection. The devices were recommended for all cardiac and respiratory patients who were at high risk for re-hospitalization since the devices would be able to recognize early symptoms and help the nurses to make quick decisions about the patients’ plan of care. So what is telenursing and telehealth? Hebda & Czar (2013), states that “telenursing is the use of telecommunications and information technology (IT) for the delivery of nursing care”. Telehealth is “the use of telecommunications technologies and electronic information to exchange healthcare information and to provide and support services such as long-distance clinical healthcare to clients”. Although, telenursing is still a fairly new concept to me, there is documentation of telenursing in the 1970’s. The first published telenursing article was written by Mary Quinn, RN in 1974...
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...To ration or not to ration? When asked to read these two different opinions on health care I was so intrigued. I would have never thought that this cold be an option for the U.S. to decide to help get out of debt and save money on health care. Although both writers made very good points, its quite obvious in my opinion what the right thing to do is. I don’t understand how anyone could live with himself or herself if they picked to rationalize health care. In my reading Laster made a very good point that stuck out to me. Laster stated, “rationing would narrow our horizons, inhibit creative imagination and vision, slow the progress of Medicare and trap us within the limitations of today’s knowledge and todays technology-a high price to pay” (laster, 1990) Why would scientist want to find cures for life threatening disease if our health care wont even treat patients with life threatening diseases because it cost them to much? Who is equal to go that can say one person is worthy of living than another? Singer made a very good point that we put a price on our own lives with saying how much we will pay for airbags or car insurance. Although I don’t think that putting a price on our health, I think that’s taking a risk. When it comes down to a person being sick and loosing their life I guarantee they are willing to pay anything for their life. The part Singer put in his article that touched me was when he said a Washington post asked Daniel Zemel, a Rabbi what he thought...
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...problems solved and discussed during the lectures and in HW3 and HW4 the following list should serve as a reminder of what we covered in lectures 9 through 13. Please refer to EXAM 1 handout for topics covered in lectures 2 through 8. • Services Pricing • Advanced booking • Pricing with capacity constraints • Uncertainty in demand • How to calculate optimal booking limit • Overage, underage costs • Optimal protection level and critical ratio • Cancellations, no-shows and overbooking • Optimal overbooking level • Advance Selling • New technology and facilitation of advanced selling • Quality adjusted life year and its costs • Value of Statistical life • Factors influencing pricing of Gardasil • How to calculate costs per QALY and use it to price treatments • Features of information goods and implications for pricing • Cost...
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...For one to judge the concept of superlative degrees of health and compare it to previous and forthcoming generations, it is essential to understand how we define health, measure it and understand its determinants. As it turns out, defining health is not as straight forward as it appears though we always have the utopian health definition of WHO to fall back upon which defines health as ‘not merely absence of disease but an overall of state of physical, mental, and social well-being’ (WHO 1950). Measures of health may vary with time and space but many health specialists are of the opinion that levels of disease in a population (morbidity) and frequency of death at a particular age (mortality) represent vital and gross health statistics (McKeown 1978). Basically, improved health is reflected in decline of mortality. Determinants of health can be sought in various health theories or models. One of these is ‘life course model’ which offers an interdisciplinary framework for guiding research on health, human development and aging. Life course epidemiology is defined as the study of long term effects on later health or disease risk of physical or social exposures during gestation, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and later adult life (Kuh and Hardy 2002). The aim is to elucidate biological, behavioural, and psychosocial determinants of health that operate across an individual’s life course, or across generations, to influence the development of disease risk. Combining the definition...
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...Health Economics and Health Policy A critique of the methods used to measure and value health in cost-effectiveness studies submitted to NICE. Introduction The responsibility to provide data concerning “Good value for money” in regards to a new treatment or healthcare programme intervention has for itself a remarkable relevance. However, this information has become much more important in recent years due to the fact that we are facing a combination of unprecedented demand with the limitation of resources and the necessity of making decisions regarding priority setting in the healthcare system. Priority setting in healthcare means to determine what is most important in the context of finite resources as well as to decide who is going to benefit from a particular health care service as giving priority to one group of people inexorably implies taking it away from another one. (William, 1998). Nowadays, health care systems are facing the problem of how to set priorities in the allocation of health care resources in order to provide a high quality of care to those who need it and at a cost their governments can afford. All this happens in a time when people have greatest expectations concerning the care they should receive and the health care innovation offers broader options for interventions. (Littlejohns et al, 2012). In England the NHS has the obligation to provide a comprehensive and fair service for all and at the same time to promote an equal...
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...increasing and budgets are being reduced Decisions should be based on evidence. NICE make cost benefit decisions regarding the provision of medications these may be undermined by politicians e.g. the ‘cancer fund’ . Should we fund interventions that might prolong life for a short while but are very expensive? How do we value the lives of the unborn, the young and the elderly? What rights do we have to interfere with the decisions made by adults on how to live their lives? These are contentious ethical issues. There is a wealth of literature addressing these difficult questions but with often conflicting answers. It is widely accepted that rationing is necessary for the fair allocation of resources The concept of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) was proposed as a means to allocate scarce resources (Williams, Brock.) This was criticised because it discriminates against the elderly, the disabled and those with a short life expectancy. Because of disagreement and lack of consensus Daniels and Sabin proposed that the only reliable guidance is to use fair and transparent processes to justify decisions. Sometimes certain groups are targeted to prevent future ill health but is it ethical to when patients do not want them? The Nuffield council for bio ethics report Public Health: Ethical Issues develops a “stewardship model” setting out goal and constraints for public health and includes an “intervention ladder” giving examples where different levels of intervention could be justified....
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...Research Assignment Article: Expensive Cancer Drugs: A Comparison between the United States and the United Kingdom. The article that I will do an overview on is entitled: Expensive Cancer Drugs: A Comparison between the United States and the United Kingdom. The article compared the United Kingdom’s and the United States experience with cancer drugs and how expensive they can be due to medical technologies. This article also discusses the differences between the two countries access to new cancer drugs and their cancer outcomes. Most think that the wealthy can buy their way to new medical technologies and treatments but is this true? This article breaks down how it is possible for the wealthy and the low income population can to receive cancer drugs in both the United Kingdom and in the United States. The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) is funded by a general taxation system with a budget that is set every 3 years by government. This service is offered to the citizens of the United Kingdom can receive healthcare regardless of financial status. NHS is the main care provider for the majority of the population. When it comes to the least restrictive pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement the United Kingdom has it. The surprising thing abut the NHS I found was almost all cancer drugs become free at the point of service using taxpayers money allocated to them by the government for the resident’s needs. Not all drugs are offered free. The Health and Clinical Excellence...
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