First few Article Sentences
For better or worse, in the American business environment ethics and best expectations gradually become supplanted by government regulations. Witness the defense industry scandals of the 1980’s and the promulgation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1991. In the late 1990’s, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) began issuing “voluntary compliance guidance” for different segments of the healthcare industry. But in the years since then, a spate of new regulatory activity has transformed compliance from a voluntary activity to one that is mandated. How healthcare organizations can anticipate and respond to the interplay between ethics and regulatory compliance is one focus of “Healthcare Regulatory Compliance,” a UW Extension Outreach Certificate Program. Consider the example of quality in healthcare.
In Latin, it is “primum non nocere” but most of us are more familiar with the English translation: “First, do no harm.” Since the days of the Greeks and Romans, this dictum, codified (to a degree) in physician oaths over the years, has sufficed to assure the public that healthcare was focused on safety and quality—upholding ethical precepts of “doing good.”