The Institutional Aims of the Public Healthcare System and Its Ethical-Social Action

In recent years, the reflection on the social role the healthcare company plays has led public opinion, management scholars and the healthcare system themselves to place the concept of ethics at the centre of their attention. Throughout the decades, the doctrine has taken notable steps forward in the definition of the particular version of ethics, that is, business ethics, while at the same time, quite a few healthcare system have begun to equip themselves with instruments for defining and measuring their ethical behaviour (e.g. ethical codes, customer satisfaction tools, complaint handling). Today, in fact, many healthcare systems are fully aware that it is in their best interest to manage their ethics as much as their economy and that it is wrong to consider the commitment of social responsibility within the government only as a purely moral concern (and therefore, in some ways, optional). Today, the healthcare system is given a new role by the society, which stands side by side with the by now "institutional" role of producing goods and services while creating welfare: it thus becomes an organism that must behave more responsible in satisfying human values. It becomes a cell that works in a synergetic manner within the larger macroeconomic system.