Question

Do you see any conflict in allowing private for-profit and not-for-profit hospital accreditation programs to accredit hospitals on behalf of Medicare, noting that the hospitals pay the accrediting organization to conduct such surveys?

Answer 1

For profits and non profits hospitals accreditation, there are someajor differences like :-

1) tax for property is exempted for non profit hospitals, and is generally undertaken by boards, trustees or govt. , But sometimes in these practices quality of care is not upto the level of care required by the patient.

2) Also in non profit hospitals, there is less capital available for any changes or updation or any machine, to be done in hospital, alos there might be some issue in salary or incentives for healthcare workers or staff.

But under some boards and govt. Control these issues are not there because of proper availability of capital as share given for healthcare, therefore non profit hospitals are mainly preferred by local people, because they get good medical services at very low price

While ethical issues related to profit hospitals include

(1) exacerbate the problem of access to health care,

(2) constitute unfair competition against nonprofit institutions,

(3) treat health care as a commodity rather than a right,

(4) include incentives and organizational controls that adversely affect the physician-patient relationship, creating conflicts of interest that can diminish the quality of care and erode the patient's trust in his physician and the public's trust in the medical profession,

(5) undermine medical education, and

(6) constitute a "medical-industrial complex" that threatens to use its great economic power to exert undue influence on public policy concerning health care.