Ethical or not??

[lee1]

Please tell me your opinion. Do you think it is ethical for nonprofit hospital administrators/managers to receive monetary bonuses for reducing expenses when those bonuses have been gained by increasing pt/nurse ratios, reducing ancillary support personnel or by decreasing supply availability to the unit floor???

If these hospitals are making profits, what should be done with those profits? Should (or maybe there already exists) caps on money available to management as bonuses. Since a portion of their money is from medicare/medicaid should that money be returned back to the hospital to give better patient care??

[leslie :-D]

Please tell me your opinion. Do you think it is ethical for nonprofit hospital administrators/managers to receive monetary bonuses for reducing expenses when those bonuses have been gained by increasing pt/nurse ratios, reducing ancillary support personnel or by decreasing supply availability to the unit floor???

If these hospitals are making profits, what should be done with those profits? Should (or maybe there already exists) caps on money available to management as bonuses. Since a portion of their money is from medicare/medicaid should that money be returned back to the hospital to give better patient care??

i would think it should be reinvested into the hospital. same old story, whether it's for profit or not for profit: mgmt receives these cushy bonuses while increasing pt loads for nurses or not recognizing the immeasurable importance of nursing staff. if they had any sort of conscience, they'd be sharing their bonuses w/nsg staff.

[SmilingBluEyes]

Ethically, it should be re-invested in the folks who make this all happen. But we all know many administrators/CEO's are not very ethical, are they.

[talaxandra]

While I appreciate that monetarily rewarding administrators encourgaes them to run an institution more effectively, it seems that all too often that bonus is the primary motivation. I'd rather see the money go back into patient care or infrastructure.

[LydiaNN]

In theory, bonuses are paid for "increased efficiency", not decreased level of patient care. I know the reality is considerably different, but I imagine that if asked, administrators would insist they earned their bonuses by tightening their ship, not by lowering their standards. So, no I don't think it is ethical for administrators to accept bonuses earned by cutting patient care, but also no, I don't imagine they are suffering from any such crisis of conscience.