Ethics in the management of health care organizations.

This article introduces the topic of ethics in the management of health care institutions and provides a glimpse at how issues of ethics have grown in recent years and are apt to be applied in the future. Ethics and some of its basic conceptual and practical tools are defined. A brief history of the ethics of managing health care institutions, a crucial context for understanding the contemporary ethics of health care institutions, is provided. What has changed in the past 10 years and how those changes have resulted in the ethical heterogeneity of contemporary health care institutions is discussed. Finally, some preventive ethics strategies for the management of health care institutions are suggested.