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For Immediate Release
NOTE: Please note a community conference on reforming health care in an ethical manner will be held in Denver on Monday, Oct. 8. Media and the public are invited to attend; registration is required. The attached advisory contains additional information for the event.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Tonya Ewers, (303) 724-1520, tonya.ewers@uchsc.edu
Health Care Leaders Propose Ethical Framework for Health System Reform
AURORA (Sept. 26, 2007) – A group of prominent leaders from patient, professional, purchaser and provider organizations has come to agreement on a basic ethical framework that should drive health system reform.
In a recently-released Hastings Center Report on ethics and access to care, the group notes that many reform proposals are “driven by widely divergent ethical principles, or…lack a coherent ethical grounding.” They propose a consensus ethical framework, which would consist of four ethical obligations regarding access to health care.
According to the group, an ethical health system must be universal, limitations on care must be determined through an ethical process, the system must be sustainable, and all stakeholders – including providers, payers and patients – must be accountable.
The group further lays out specific recommendations for reform. For example, with regard to a fair process for setting limits on health benefits, the group refers to its earlier report (available at www.EthicalForce.org ) which included more than fifty specific recommendations for an ethically defensible process to set limits on benefits.
With regard to sustainability, the group recommends a process to set goals for the allocation of shared societal resources to health care. They also note that “universality should not be sacrificed to achieve sustainability; excluding individuals or populations from access… should not be used to restrain cost.”
With regard to accountability, the group recommends that proposals include both individual and societal responsibilities toward paying for health care. They recommend that reform should include incentives to carefully monitor and improve quality.
Dr. Paul Schyve, chair of the Ethical Force Program’s Oversight Body and senior vice president at the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) said: “By all accounts, health care in America faces many ethical challenges – the most notable being that 47 million people are without health insurance. But one of the main barriers to change has been the lack of consensus on the fundamental principles that should govern reform of the American health care system. This report provides a shared ethical framework for health reform, which has been carefully vetted with practitioners, employers, politicians, and the public.”
Dr. Mark Levine, a faculty member in the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center’s (UCDHSC) School of Medicine, member of the Ethical Force Program’s Oversight Body and lead author of the report, said the ethical framework is based on “shared American values, such as equality of opportunity, justice and compassion for our most vulnerable neighbors. These are values that everyone can buy into, yet until now they haven’t been organized and articulated in such as way as to help drive health system reform. That’s what this report can do.”
Russell Teagarden, MA, another member of the Oversight Body and an author on the report, called the group’s effort a critical step toward an ethical health care system.
“The group believes that a solid ethical grounding is needed for meaningful reforms that will stand the test of time and hold up to inevitable political pressures to retain the status quo,” he said.
The Report on Ethics and Access to Care is part of a set of projects on ethics across the health care system being carried out by The Ethical Force Program, which is a multi-stakeholder collaborative led by the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association. The Program is directed by an Oversight Body, which includes patient, practitioner, provider and purchaser representatives. The report does not represent a policy statement of the AMA or any of the other organizations involved in the Ethical Force Program. The Ethical Force Program currently receives funding from several non-profit foundations; this report was funded by the Institute for Ethics. The report is available at www.thehastingscenter.org.
The University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center is one of three universities in the University of Colorado System. Located in Denver, on the Auraria Campus, at Ninth & Colorado Blvd. and on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo., UCDHSC is Colorado’s premier research university offering more than 100 degrees and programs in 12 schools and colleges and serving more than 28,000 students in Metro Denver and online. For more information, visit the Web site at www.ucdhsc.edu or the UCDHSC Newsroom at http://www.uchsc.edu/news.
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