Health Care Ethics Committees (HECs) – a useful instrument for legal compliance?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46941/2025.se1.8Keywords:
Health care ethics committee, ethics consultation, hospitals, legal compliance, patient rights, patient´s well-being, legal conformity, prevention.Abstract
Until now, health care respective hospital ethics committees (HECs) have hardly been considered as an instrument of compliance. This article presents an initial review of this established structure from the point of view of legal compliance. To this end, the emergence, dissemination, and functioning of HECs in the USA and Germany are presented and questions of quality are addressed. The extent to which the structure of ethics committees in health care facilities can be viewed and utilized as a compliance tool is examined in relation to compliance as a means of ensuring legal conformity, preventing legal violations, and as a compliance culture. It is shown that HECs are suitable as a compliance tool if they function well, but that some improvements are still needed, especially with regard to the ethical and legal expertise of the counselors and the financial resources of the structure.
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