The Ethical Life of Health Care Organizations

While organizations have had a long history in the life of health, during the twentieth century they have achieved an unprecedented. Individual decisionmakers increasingly are being supplanted by the, standards, traditions, and collective decision process of, which instruct and construct institutional actions in shaping care choices. As their authority has grown, these organizations have given adequate attention to the essential associations that exist among constituents, to the values generated and used in their interactions, or the role of the organization itself in fostering humaneness in the and environment of the workplace. This article addresses these, focussing especially on academically affiliated institutions. It the connections between policymaking and human values in health organizations. It calls for a major exploration of the values determining actions, comparable to the fundamental reappraisal by modern clinicians the ethics governing their individual practices, and commensurate with the and responsibility of organizations in health care today.