Medical Management Committees within an HCO

Identify at least two medical management committees within an HCO and explain their roles.

Most health organizations have certain corporate committees which play a role in focusing on management issues that are relevant to running a business. It is worth remarking that such common committees include;

Medical advisory committee

This is a team that comprises of management experts in medical related disciplines and the key purpose of this particular committee is to review general management issues that are raised by the medical director (Kongstvedt, 2009; p. 51). In addition, it is worth noting that such tabled issues may include alterations in particular contracts that are related to the running of the healthcare organization. Other issues may constitute compensation of workers, authorization procedures as well as the review of management protocols. Moreover, this committee is charged with serving as a sounding board for the medical director since it has the decision making authority.

Quality management committee

This committee is usually required by law for accreditation purposes and maintaining transparency within the healthcare organization. Kongstvedt (2009) states that “the quality management committee is essential for overseeing quality management, standard setting, data review, feedback to providers, follow-up, and approval of sanctions” (p.51). Nevertheless, one can point out that this committee comprised of quality management experts is accountable for evaluation of credentials attached to every professional working with a particular healthcare organization to ensure that they are well trained and knowledgeable.

How can medical management committees influence the process of health policymaking outside of their HCO’s?

In order to have effective policies put in place, the medical management committees ought to ensure that transparency is observed in all the policy-making procedures. This includes the employment of experts in various fields of medicine to handle specific fields. Kongstvedt (2009) suggests that contracts should only be awarded to the qualified candidates in order to ensure that no corrupt trails affect the future running of the organization. It is worth noting that poorly written contracts confuse and mislead people who are associated with the particular policies. Thus clarity should be highly considered as a key factor in order to reduce the substantially of future disagreements.

List some legal and ethical dilemmas to consider when creating new policies.

It is worth observing that ethical and legal dilemmas pose a major issue especially when it comes to the creation of new policies. Such dilemmas may include discrimination of employees during appraisals and also during awarding of new contracts. Subsequently, the composition of potential employees in most healthcare organizations changes drastically due to their exit as a result of discomfort brought about by discrimination at the workplace. Robinson (2003) states that “minority employees and administrators have faced discrimination and this has affected their performance” (p. 164).

In addition, there are more ethical dilemmas that act as barriers to effective management and may include the disclosure of employee’s health information during recruitment procedures. Kongstvedt (2009) argues that corruption usually plays a lead role during recruitment process whereby those who are not fully qualified for a certain profession manage to secure jobs by bribing the management leaving out qualified candidates.

This makes it difficult for the organization to provide quality services in the future due to such drawbacks. Apart from ethical dilemmas, it is also necessary to point out that administrators and employees face legal dilemmas especially when the association does not follow the regulations set by the concerned regulatory bodies. For example, organizations violate the pollution act and drug safety act (Robinson, 2003).