You are a lead member of the legal team at a Community Hospital and the new CEO, Karen, has been brief by the legal team regarding a lawsuit initiated by the family of Tom Breach, a patient that died of a heart attack while in the Hospital emergency room. Karen is getting more involved and asking many questions to better understand the law suit and what the Hospital can or should do to address the situation.
It’s not typical for the CEO to get so involved in the details of law suits, but Karen is and wants to because she wants the hospital to do better. What would you do if you were her? As her counsel, what legal advice and options do you give her?
Ethics Portion (approx. 2-3 pages)
a. What ethical issues does Karen face?
b. Who are the stakeholders and what makes them stakeholders (i.e., what are their interests)?
c. What choices does Karen face in response to the lawsuit?
d. If you were Karen, what would you do? Why would you take that course of action? How would you explain your course of action to the Hospital’s Board of Directors? What should you say? How should you say it? (It is OK to use the first-person “I” when answering these questions.)
e. What 2-3 ethical models (from Chapter 2) could you apply here? Define the models and how they could help you decide what to do. (Note: the seeing-knowing-doing concept is NOT an ethical model that informs ethical decision-making. Rather, it is simply a description of the process of ethical decision-making. You should use 2-3 of the other traditional ethical models we covered in class and/or from Chapter 2.)