HA3300D – Healthcare Policy and Ethics

  Discussion 09: Public Health Policy Development

Respond to the following scenario using information from this week:

You are a member of the Board of Trustees at your local community hospital The Chief Operating Officer asks you to sit on the new organ transplant committee. The hospital has just invested millions of dollars in the new service. It should be online in three months. Livers will be the first organ transplanted. The committee must at this point write up policies and procedures relevant to the service. The committee assigns you the task of writing a draft of the policy related specifically to the criteria that the hospital would use to determine the ranking of candidates for new livers. That is, in the event that there are, for example, two livers available, but six people on the transplant waiting list, how does the hospital decide who gets the livers?

What criteria will you list in your draft, and why? Justify your choices in ethical terms. Cite what you have learned from the case of Sarah Murnaghan, the Public Health Code of Ethics, and information from your textbook in your response.

Your initial response should be 8 – 10 sentences in length and include an APA-style references list.