Milestone One: Introduction

By. Katelyn Bruner

HCM-700 Healthcare Administration Capstone

Dr. PaulchrisOkpala

Southern New Hampshire University

            In the field of medical administration there is a set of moral obligations that must be followed by all personnel. The Medical Code of Ethics are not a set of laws, but are commonly used standards of conduct that required honorable and responsible behavior among not only physicians but all professionals. All medical professionals have a responsibility to put the patient first, to society, other medical professionals, and to self.

            Medical staff, including medical office assistants, can run into ethical and legal issues in their daily jobs. Issues such as telling the truth, lying, confidentiality, conflict of interest, abortion, informed consent of treatment, child abuse, elderly abuse professional boundaries, and end of life care are examples of what may arise.

            In this capstone, a Medical Office Assistant program will be outlined. This program is designed to train medical office assistants in the understanding of the Code of Ethics that can be applied at their workplace daily. In this program, students will learn; the fundamental responsibilities of a physician and their responsibility towards patients and society, an understanding of the physician-patient relationship and how to process requests for initiating and dissolving a physician-patient relationship, ethical procedures for releasing medical records as to protect the physician and the patient rights, communication, decision making, and consent process when dealing with patients and third parties, privacy and confidentiality of patients, physicians, and staff, safe and ethical process of record keeping, storing, and destroying of patient charts, and understanding the role of public health and their integration with Ministry of health and long term care.

            Medical Office Assistants are “frontline health care workers” along with many other positions. Frontline health care workers are said to be the first point of contact for patients, families, and caregivers. These employees bring a great impact to different aspects of the workplace. Organizational efficiency is the most common impact visible to others. This is the organization of all frontline workers leading to greater efficiency by accomplishing routine tasks, clerical work, communicating with patient’s other providers, and spending time with patient to understand any cultural/linguistic needs (Brookings, 2016). By balancing all of this, patients experience shorter wait times and the practice can increase the number of patients treated (Brookings, 2016). Staff satisfaction occurs when frontline workers can accrue cost savings with reductions in the cost of recruiting and on-boarding. Community development occurs when organizations invest in the development of frontline workers by helping them direct educational resources to lower-level professionals, while supporting community college education. Financial performance is improved on behalf of efficient frontline workers in many of these ways as well.

            Developing this program will help with these improvements for frontline workers to become possible in a health care organization. Although this program will directly affect medical office assistants, the impact of the program will be shown through medical professionals, patients, and caregivers as well.

References

Brookings. (2016, June). Retrieved from Redesigning the Care Team: The Critical Role of Frontline Workers and Models for Success: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/FINAL-Hitachi-Toolkit-32014.pdf

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