Question

Health Law and Ethics Case Study 4-37 Directions: Read the scenario and answer the questions that follow in depth. Demonstrate your legal and ethical knowledge in your approach Scenario: One of the physicians on staff is telling you about a study that he is doing on his patients. He hopes to have the study published and to receive a grant to expand his research. He offers to hire you to help him with the data collection during your off hours. You accept and begin helping him. You start collecting data. When you access the file the next day, you realize that he has removed a number of patients from the study. You suspect that they we removed intentionally, but you cannot be sure. You put your suspicions aside and proceed with your work and add more patients to the database. A few days later, more patients have been removed from the database. re When you do some investigation, you discover that the patients who were removed were sicker and/or had a poor outcome. 1. What should you do? 2. What issues are involved in this situation?

Answer 1

1.The following things can be done

• Talking to the physician in regards to the findings cannot be useful because it clearly describes the physician is trying to get Grants from the research and not for the benefits of sick patients
• Informing it to the particular concern or the management is necessary to take an action
• It is also important to inform this to the person who is going to analyse, interpret ,check genuinity of the reserach and approve or reject this.
• The medical association for research has to be informed in formal way

2.The main issue involved here is a form of Medical fraud because the physician has removed the data intentionally for monetary gains.This is punishable and the physician will be sued for the act.