Description
Please rewrite this and make sure it is in the full word count.
Question: You are the executive director of a small publicly funded behavioral health agency that serves indigent clients. After 10 years of being able to serve all clients seeking help, your agency has just received a 20% funding cut and must prioritize which services to discontinue and which clients to turn away. The community has many suggestions: stop serving undocumented immigrants and their children; stop serving substance abuse clients; limit all clients to six sessions; discontinue providing expensive services like psychiatry; lay off professional counselors and hire non-licensed paraprofessionals; stop providing counseling and instead simply offer peer self-help groups and parenting classes; serve only the most seriously ill (or the least seriously ill); and serve only children.
How would you approach the difficult task of cutting services by 20% in a manner that reflects your ethical obligations as a community health setting?
How would you communicate this to your stakeholders?
What are the ethical issues, privacy laws, HIPAA regulations, and boundaries to consider?
How would you make a final decision about what to cut from your program?
I would approach this difficult task by limiting all clients to six lessons. I think this would be most effective in regard to the ethical obligation in a community health setting because none of the beneficiaries will be terminated. Only the hours of service will be reduced, thus squeezing all the services to meet the given funding. I would communicate this to the stakeholders giving them appropriate reasons why the funding was cut. The ethical issues I would consider when dealing with the situation would be using appropriate measures that would ensure equality in service for all served members (Stievano & Tschudin, 2019). In this case, the boundaries to consider are the guidelines given by the funding agency not to go against their regulations. I would decide what to cut from the program by examining all programs and the weight they deserve.