Presented by:
This symposium will explore the necessary confluence of medical ethics and business ethics in the singular interest of healthcare. Clinicians and healthcare executives often operate with different loyalties (to patients vs. to shareholders) and different priorities (the provision of care vs. economic returns). While it may be too facile to blame such supposed differences as the sole cause for the healthcare crisis in America, addressing that crisis necessitates understanding these differences and their impact through the lens of ethical obligations. We will examine the notion of a shared code of ethics — one that serves the interest of health care without ignoring real economic requirements — in the Boardrooms and C-Suites of our healthcare institutions.
Program Schedule
8:30 am - 9:30 am — Registration & Breakfast (continental)
9:30 am - 10:00 am — Welcome & Opening Statements
Steven Bander (The Bander Center for Medical Business Ethics) and Mark Mercurio (the Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Boston Children's Hospital)
10:00 - 11:00 am — Session 1- An Introduction to the Challenge: Convergences & Divergences – Finding Ethical Common Ground in the Boardroom and at the Bedside
Keynote Speaker: Troyen Brennan (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)
The opening session will explore whether the ethical obligations of health system leadership are the same as the ethical obligations of individual clinicians, and ultimately, in each professional role (Hospital C-Suite and Clinician), whom these professionals owe their loyalty and obligation to.
11:00 am - 11:15 am — Coffee Break
11:15 am - 12:30 pm — Session 2 - The Business Medical Ethics of Patient Selection [for Organ Transplantation]
Moderator: William F. Parker (University of Chicago) Panelists: Peter Angelos (University of Chicago); Katherine Peeler (Boston Children's Hospital)
This panel will explore how expected revenue, costs, and clinical outcomes influence which patients are offered procedures in our increasingly corporatized healthcare system. [The panelists will focus on patient selection of organ transplantation, a highly regulated and lucrative life-saving procedure which uses a scarce resource].
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm — Lunch
1:30 pm - 2:45 pm — Session 3 - Ethical Challenges of the Private Offer of IVF
Moderator: Vardit Ravitsky (The Hastings Center for Bioethics); Panelists: Louise P. King
(Harvard Medical School), Alan Penzias (Harvard Medical School)
IVF is an interesting case study of ethical issues arising from the tension between business and medical contexts. Here, the commercial setting touches on an important health care procedure that has enormous emotional and social implications.
2:45 pm - 3:00 pm — Coffee break
3:00 pm - 4:15 pm — Session 4 - Creative Approaches to Governance in Healthcare Systems
Moderator: Lauren Taylor (NYU Grossman School of Medicine); Panelists: Fred Cerise (Parkland Health); additional panelists TBA
A discussion around governance models for healthcare institutions designed to ensure a proper, appropriately balanced, integration of business and medical ethics in the interest of healthcare.
4:15 - 4:25 pm — Break
4:25 - 5:05 pm — Closing Discussion - Ethics & Education
Featured Speakers: Kevin B. Churchwell (Boston Children's Hospital), David Goldman (FASPE)
What unifying principles can be a starting point in both medicine and business to address the business of healthcare? Our closing discussion will explore how educational institutions can prepare future executives and clinicians to meet these challenges.
5:05 - 6:00 pm Closing Reception