Ethical Issues and Recommendations in Grateful Patient Fundraising and Philanthropy.

Abstract

Grateful patients provide substantial philanthropic funding for health care institutions, resulting in important societal benefits. Although grateful patient fundraising (GPFR) is widespread, it raises an array of ethical issues for patients, physicians, development professionals, and institutions. These issues have not been described comprehensively, and there is insufficient guidance to inform the ethical practice of GPFR. Consequently, the authors convened a "Summit on the Ethics of Grateful Patient Fundraising," with the goal of identifying primary ethical issues in GPFR and offering recommendations regarding how to manage them. Participants were 29 experts from across the United States who represented the perspectives of bioethics, clinical practice, development, law, patients, philanthropy, psychology, and regulatory compliance. Intensive discussions resulted in articulating ethical issues for physicians and other clinicians (discussions with patients about philanthropy; physician-initiated discussions; clinically vulnerable patients; conflicts of obligation and equity regarding physician's time, attention, and responsiveness and the provision of special services; and transparency and respecting donor intent) as well as for development officers and institutions (transparency in the development professional-donor relationship; impact on clinical care; confidentiality and privacy; conflicts of interest; institution-patient/donor relationship; concierge services for grateful patients; scientific merit and research integrity; transparency in use of philanthropic gifts; and institutional policies and training in responsible GPFR). While these recommendations promise to mitigate some of the ethical issues associated with GPFR, important next steps include conducting research on the ethical issues in GPFR, disseminating these recommendations, developing standardized training for clinicians regarding them, and revising them as warranted.

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Citation

Published Version (Please cite this version)

10.1097/ACM.0000000000002365

Publication Info

Collins, Megan E, Steven Rum, Jane Wheeler, Karen Antman, Henry Brem, Joseph Carrese, Michelle Glennon, Jeffrey Kahn, et al. (2018). Ethical Issues and Recommendations in Grateful Patient Fundraising and Philanthropy. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 93(11). pp. 1631–1637. 10.1097/ACM.0000000000002365 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20595.

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Scholars@Duke

Ohman

Erik Magnus Ohman

Professor of Medicine

Dr. Ohman, Professor of Medicine, received medical degrees from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the National University of Ireland (1984, Fellowship 1984-1987), and completed his training in cardiology at Duke University (1987-1991), where he has remained on faculty. In 2001, he became Chief of Cardiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he founded the UNC Heart Center and became its first director. In 2005 he returned to Duke to pursue his interest in advanced coronary disease as the Director of the Program for Advanced Coronary Disease. Since that time, he has been appointed to Associate Director of the Duke Heart Center, the Kent and Siri Rawson Director for the Program for Advanced Coronary Disease, and most recently, Vice-Chair of Development and Innovation in the Department of Medicine.

Dr. Ohman’s clinical and research interests include interventional cardiology and high-risk supported PCI, and treatment of patients with advanced/complex coronary disease. He has researched how to improve patient care through the use of guidelines-based therapies and adherence, and examining global cardiovascular risk and health. He has been a participant on numerous guidelines writing committees, served on the ACC/AHA oversight committee for guidelines development, and has served on the steering committees for trials on ST-elevation myocardial infarction and non-ST-elevation ACS. He is a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, and a consultant for the FDA Advisory Panel for Cardiovascular Devices. 

Dr. Ohman has published over 600 peer-reviewed papers and three books in cardiovascular medicine. He holds three U.S. patents in reperfusion therapy. He is an associate editor for the American Heart Journal and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and the American Journal of Cardiology.  He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, the Royal Society of Medicine (U.K.), the European Society of Cardiology, the Society of Cardiac Angiography and Interventions, and the American College of Cardiology. 


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