Patient productivity as a value and a variable in geriatric healthcare allocation.

Abstract

Admittedly, productivity is valued in American society. For jobs that involve manufacturing, each minute of production is calculated in formats of cost and profit. Management sets goals for individual and team performance that foster competition and an ever-fervent culture of output. Industry and academia have gone to great lengths to develop tools that measure productivity as a variable, and certainly, in the manufacturing setting, productivity is a value because it promotes competition (thus more output) and efficiency (less waste). But is it ethically appropriate for productivity-based values and goals to cross over to healthcare allocation? Can other constructions of productivity be valued in terms of healthcare allocation or is the American work ethic (benefiting people in the prime of their productive years) an ethically appropriate route?