Vertical blinds open and close master suite

Vertical blinds open and close master suite

Mature ethics committees will be increasingly called upon to engage in advocacy outside the walls of their institutions in the next decade if they are to fulfill their mission within those very walls. The institutions they serve are not just a collection of miscellaneous health care services, but agents of care and healing with a special trust, a fiduciary responsibility, that most other market-oriented institutions do not share. To meet this responsibility, health care institutions must give high priority to the interests of their patients.Perhaps what is behind this objection is a concern about whom ethics committees represent when they speak out in the corporate or public forum. A committee that advocates a policy that was adopted at its institution from an ethics committee recommendation should not present a problem of representation for its institution. But ethics committees may have recommended a different course of action from that taken at their hospital.Whiteface, N.Y., was the site of the 1991 Freestyle World Ski Championships and the 1980 Winter Olympics. Strong on advanced terrain and just eight miles outside Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains, Whiteface houses the longest vertical drop ski trail on the east coast--3,216 feet. Its 17 miles of steep trails are served by nine lifts with daily tickets starting at $28.New roles will open to ethics committees in the 1990s in the face of dramatic changes in the structure of the health care system and range of patient care choices. As vertically integrated corporations take over the for-profit sector, an ethos of profit maximization and value-blind competition will affect options available to patients in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Moreover, if current trends continue, local and federal governments will enact new laws and regulations restricting the kinds of care available not only to the poor, but to those better off, in attempts to decrease growth in their budgetary allocations to health care. The cost containment policies of corporate superstructures and government bodies will adversely constrain the health care choices of patients and create barriers against shared decisionmaking by patients and caregivers. Ethics committees, in response, will find themselves morally impelled to move into the corporate and public policy arenas to advocate a recovery of our fundamental vision of the connection between human dignity, individual need, and the common good.

Photo: Slats slide--and pivot open and closed--in track recessed in floor