`Legislate, Regulate, Terminate` is Not the Solution to Our Ethical Crisis

It is not hard to find daily news stories of behavioral health professionals being charged with illegal or unethical behaviors. It is common to hear about programs suffering in reputation, census, financial or other troubles. And it is easy to see why all this leads to the general public’s lack of trust or belief in us as an industry. Imagine if we are seeking help and hearing stories of patient brokering, illegal/unethical activities and patient harm. It makes sense why we see so many strong opinions, recommendations and suggestions on what is needed to address this problem in our industry. But after completing another compliance overview training last week with our new staff at Addiction Campuses, it hit me: We cannot legislate, regulate or terminate our way out of this crisis!

Often you will see criticism that the industry needs new legislation, needs to be better regulated or staff just need to be terminated in order for us to become more ethical. But the truth is we already have legislation, and we are quite heavily regulated—even though it may seem like some ignore laws and regulations. I once worked for a CEO who told me that we didn’t need to follow the regulations and also worked for an organization that used attorneys to find creative ways to avoid following laws. Of course, we should take sanctions on staff who do not follow rules or policies, but if that is the main action we take we are missing many opportunities.

We need a much more comprehensive, integrated and proactive approach. Last month, my blog focused on the basic ethics that any behavioral health organization should use as a basis for compliance programs. Ensuring we have a code of ethics, staff training and having all activities aligned with our core values will help avoid potential ethical issues.

And more importantly, building resilience for all staff to engage them, empower their teams and enhance the organizational culture to be ethical is critical. Being certified in Brene Brown’s work has been instrumental for me to experience the transformation that can occur when we truly approach our work with authenticity, vulnerability and trust. These are the true foundations of ethical, quality and safe care.

When staff feel safe, see the values modeled by leadership and they experience a healthy environment is when they will be ethical, follow the regulations and truly understand the significance of legislative issues that drive care. So hopefully you reviewed your mission, vision and values, updated your code of conduct and have your annual plan for compliance programming in 2019. Now I invite you to add educational support for your staff that provides resilience, information and tools to use in their daily work.

At Addiction Campuses, I have the pleasure of providing annual compliance and ethics trainings to all staff, and I love to include the resilience concepts from Brene’s work so we can all be more connected, compassionate and courageous in these tough ethical times.

Maeve O’Neill, MEd, LCDC, LPC-S, CHC, CDWF/CDTLF, is vice president of compliance at Addiction Campuses.