Georgiana Antohi

Professor Tucker
PHI 1600: Class 458
11/20/2019
Ethics in the Workplace

Employee integrity is an important concept from chapter 10 that I chose to focus on. There are many
instances where one’s professional role can put him/her in a position of power over a client. If an
individual lacks a solid ethical foundation or suffers from mental health/ substance abuse issues which
disrupts ethical reasoning, he/she is likely to take advantage of that power dynamic by exploiting clients,
violating his/her professional code of ethics, and also breaking the law. This is what happened in the
case of a home health aide in the state of Ohio who was found guilty of stealing more than $250,000
from her clients in order to fuel her drug addiction. Part of an employee’s responsibilities, as mentioned
in chapter 10 are as follows; to provide honest service to their clients, to follow their employer’s work
policies and code of ethics, and to be of sound mind—free from the influence of drugs—while
conducting their work (Manias, 277). Unfortunately, the aforementioned home health aide failed in all
of those areas and wound up exploiting elderly and disabled individuals as a result (Shaffer). One of the
victims described in the article is a widowed Korean War veteran in his eighties who was robbed by the
home health aide of all of his life savings. Even though the home health aide was ultimately found guilty
of wrongdoing in a court of law and sentenced to 2 years in prison, this story highlights the vulnerability
of people who require personal care in their home and raises questions about what additional steps
employers of aides and perhaps even the government can take in order to prevent such abuses from
happening.

After doing research on home health agencies, which represent one of the main types of employers that
hire and screen home health aides, it seems to me that their code of ethics will only be as effective
insofar as the agency is willing to enforce and investigate the complaints and violations it receives.
Unfortunately, the majority of home health agencies are structured as for profit businesses according to
Medicare data. Furthermore, home health aide services account for the smallest profit margin of all the
services an agency provides, and so this creates a strong financial disincentive for an agency to spend
the resources required to develop a robust screening/oversight system for its home health aides
(“Datasets: Data.Medicare.gov.” ). In my opinion, whenever market forces produce undesirable
externalities, there should be a safety-net created by the government to mitigate those externalities.
One possible solution that would represent an improvement from the status quo would be for the
government to directly take on the role of performing background screening, verification of licensing
qualifications, and drug testing of home health aides, and share the cost of this program with the
agencies (right now agencies are responsible for the full cost of vetting their aides). A better screening
system will improve the pool of candidates that home health agencies ultimately select their aides from.
This will also provide a higher degree of assurance to individuals whose wellbeing relies on the provision
of these services that they will receive quality care and be treated with integrity.

Word Count: 531

Works Cited:

Manias, Nicholas. Ethics Applied, 9th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions, 12/2017. VitalBook file.

Shaffer, Cory. “Parma Heights Home Health Aide Who Stole More than $250K from People in Her Care
Gets Prison Sentence.” Cleveland, 12 Nov. 2019, https://www.cleveland.com/court-
justice/2019/11/parma-heights-home-health-aide-who-stole-more-than-250k-from-people-in-her-care-
gets-prison-sentence.html.

“Datasets: Data.Medicare.gov.” Data.Medicare.Gov, https://data.medicare.gov/data/home-health-

compare.