Organizational Ethics Consortia: What's the Value of a Non-profit Hospital?
Channel: HMS Center for Bioethics
Date: 2023-05-02

What’s the Value of a Non-profit Hospital? Testing an Old Theory Against Evidence From a New National Survey

Economist Kenneth Arrow once famously said, "The very word 'profit' is a signal that denies the trust relationship." By this reasoning, non-profit hospitals positively contribute to the health care industry at least in part by inviting the trust of their users. But does trust actually track with non-profit status? Can patients even pinpoint which hospitals are non-profits?

Join management scholar and ethicist Lauren Taylor as she shares findings from a new national survey measuring public attitudes toward hospital ownership status. Discussion with management and public health scholar Nancy Kane and bioethics scholar Jonathan Marks will focus on revisiting the social value of non-profit hospitals to make evidence- and ethics-aligned recommendations for hospital practice and public policy.

Presenter:
Lauren Taylor, PhD, MPH, MDiv
Assistant Professor, Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Commentators:
Nancy Kane, DBA
Professor of Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Jonathan H. Marks, BCL, MA
Director, Bioethics Program; Professor of Bioethics, Humanities, Law, and Philosophy; Affiliate Faculty, Public Policy & International Affairs, Penn State University

Moderators:
Charlotte H. Harrison, PhD, JD, MPH, HEC-C
Co-Chair, Organizational Ethics Consortium
Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School
Immediate Past Hospital Ethicist and Director, Office of Ethics
Boston Children’s Hospital
Kelsey N. Berry, PhD
Associate Faculty Director, Master of Science in Bioethics Degree Program
Lecturer, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine
Harvard Medical School