Question

What are some ethical issues related to the strategic planning process in healthcare?

Answer 1

Strategic planning in healthcare creates clarity of goal. Effective communication is often a byproduct of transparent strategic planning. A strategic plan addresses the key issues of the organization, its vision and goals, and the ways to get there. Stakeholders and employees will not have confidence in the organization when strategic planning is done without their involvement. Accountability will be only with the planners when the stakeholders and employees are not involved in strategic planning. This is one of the major ethical issues related to strategic planning in healthcare. Decision makers should also be reasonable in getting things done in the best interest of patients and staff while satisfying the stakeholders. Ethical reasoning should be the foundation of strategic planning in healthcare. Strategic planning without ethical analysis is one of the issues, which gives rise to conflicts in a healthcare organization.

Another ethical issue is the conflict between the financial goals and moral obligations. In a healthcare organization, strategic planning should be done with utmost care to avoid this conflict. Long-term and short-term financial goals are set and strategic planning is done based on this. The healthcare sector being a volatile one, the long term financial goals are often disrupted by moral obligations, which results in the conflict. For example an epidemic can cause this kind of conflict in healthcare strategic planning, which sometimes requires the organization to pool and redirect the major portion of the resources to this cause. Here moral obligation can be seen as the disruptive factor in long-term strategic planning. This gives rise to new short-term goals and strategies. There are situations when this is not practical as in the case of healthcare organizations operating at a loss. For them, their financial goal stands as a hurdle on the way of moral obligations.

Patient satisfaction is a significant issue to be dealt with in the strategic planning of healthcare. It becomes an ethical issue if strategic planning is done without considering this aspect. Unlike any other business organization, healthcare organizations deal with the lives of people. So any long-term or short-term plans made without considering this aspect pose a threat to medical ethics and is an ethical issue to be dealt with. The number of positive patient outcomes increased with a higher level of patient satisfaction. The dissatisfaction of patients can happen at various stages of treatment and due to various reasons.

Since strategic planning is not an end in itself but is a means to an end any epistemic injustice should be avoided. Epistemic injustice is an ethical issue of concern, which should be avoided at any stage of strategic planning. This can be prevented by an iterative process that would allow the patients to learn more about an issue and thus overcome the lack of operational knowledge. Relevant clinician testimony is also important to avoid epistemic injustice.