Law and Health Care System Administration

Law and Health Care System Administration

Importance of physician-patient and hospital-patient relationships

Patient is the most important person in doctor's career life. The main purpose of physician is to take care of his patients and satisfy him fully by providing fair treatment and advice. The relationship must be based on trust and confidence that the patient has over his doctor. If doctor would not fully understand the problem of patient, the chances of success are minimize. Hospital-patient relationship is based on legal and ethical concern that must be fulfilled by the hospital. The responsibility of hospital is to take care of the confidentiality of patients' medical documents and his personal details. Along with his documents, the hospital is legally responsible to make sure that the patient is getting fair treatment and availing all the facilities that he is paying for.

Considering the relationship with patient, administration department must fulfill all the legal and ethical responsibilities of hospital and doctor towards patients. Therefore, Physician-patient relationship must be strong which ultimately affect hospital-patient relationship to a great deal.

Contract Principle and Breach of Warranty

There are three ways of contracting healthcare relations. First is a Contractual relation by delegating responsibility. In summary, responsibility delegation includes setting up, provide and manage healthcare services by negotiating types on contract with private participants. For example, the devolution of public healthcare service includes private organizations manage healthcare on governments behalf. Other ways include public-private partnerships or a concession contract with an NGO. The second way is contract relationships based on an act of purchase. Here, the participant entrusts another partner to provide healthcare, instead of proving it directly. Usually, the partner who is most cost efficient in entrusted to provide healthcare services. A healthcare fund holder may buy healthcare services from health service provider (Parrot, 2006).

The third way of making a contracting relationship is by contracting based on cooperation. In contracting, the partners share resources to achieve a common goal. Franchising, is an example of cooperative contracts, is differentiated by networking (Makinnen & Leighton, 1997). Further, there can be collaborative relationship between volunteering associations and healthcare establishments. An alliance is another way of collaborating to provide healthcare services. Alliance goes one step further, where partners share resources, technology and expertise to provide best possible service (Williamson, 1979).

A contract may be discharged of there is a breach by one of the parties. A breach of contract will occur when a party fails to perform on the date fixed for the performance ( actual breach) or indicates an intention not to perform his obligation before the date fixed for performance ( anticipatory breach ).

A contract is not automatically terminate, the innocent party has the right to affirm the contract. If there is a breach of condition that is a term that goes to the root of the contract, the injured party can treat the contract discharges and also sue for damages. The injured party may however prefer to treat the contract as still continuing despite ...