Justice In Health Care

In American health care, resources are distributed by various social mechanisms, marketing process, or by different perception of medical need. The results of this inequality structures have been often the limited access to care for many of people, which provides many occasions for conflicts of interest and other unfair manipulation (Jonsen, Siegler, &Winslalde, 2010). The conceptions of justice and fairness are greatly significant to the health policy and health care improvement. The concept of justice raises the moral and social theories that work to distribute the benefits in the fair and justifiable way among all participants in the system. This week’s case study is an example of that social injustice, since the community hospital located in a poor and indigent black neighborhoods will close its emergency department from 10:00 pm until 6:00 am as a cost-saving measure. The hospital explains that the emergency department is a very expensive hospital department, so closing its emergency department(ED) may lower the hospital’s costs by eliminating the need to invest in stand-by capacity. …show more content…
Delaying to provide this urgent care for those patients will lead to increase the risk of mortality and morbidity. Researchers list four main functions served by the ED: (a) provides an urgent medical care following trauma or an acute episode of an illness, (b) offers medical care that is available only at the hospital ED, (c) works as a temporary site of medical care when the regular provider is not available, and (d) provides care on a regular basis (Guttman, Zimmerman, & Nelson,