Center for Bioethics Papers
Title
Successes and Failures of Hospital Ethics Committees: A National Survey of Ethics Committee Chairs
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
January 2002
Abstract
In 1992, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) passed a mandate that all its approved hospitals put in place a means for addressing ethical concerns. Although the particular process the hospital uses to address such concerns—ethics consultant, ethics forum, ethics committee—may vary, the hospital or healthcare ethics committee (HEC) is used most often. In a companion study to that reported here, we found that in 1998 over 90% of U.S. hospitals had ethics committees, compared to just 1% in 1983, and that many have some and a few have sweeping clinical powers in hospitals.
Date Posted: 08 March 2007
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
Reprinted in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Volume 11, Issue 1, January 2002, pages 87-93.
Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0963180102001147