Responsibilities of Nonprofit Health Care Organizations - Essay Example

The third and final category are nonprofit organizations that are founded and operated by private citizens whose main aim is to help anyone they choose to help and one of the most prominent of these organization is the World Vision Foundation. The GAO Report on nonprofit hospitals states that the Federal tax exemption for charitable organizations has been in existence since the beginning of the federal income tax law and it is based on the assumption that the loss of government tax revenue is offset by the ability of these charitable organizations to provide for the population’s welfare (2008).

One of the greatest beneficiaries of this tax exemption system has been the nonprofit hospitals, due to the belief that promotion of medical healthcare to the poor is a charitable function, and should be exempted from taxation. The IRS (1993) states that one of the main conditions for this exemption is that these hospitals should be organized and operated exclusively for the purpose of the health provision. In addition, not all the income nonprofit hospitals generates should benefit individuals within this organization, but should be put back into pursuing the main objectives of such an organization.

Furthermore, nonprofit hospitals do not have to provide free medical services in order to qualify for tax exemption so long as they provide services to the community, which will reduce the government’s financial burden. In relation to this, the clinics operated by the Memorial Medical Center help it to maintain its tax exemption status because these clinics were opened for providing better healthcare services to the communities within which they are situated. The operation of these clinics provides it with the means for it to ask for exemptions because they provide the services, which the government should be providing.

In addition, it has been seen that the provision of these services comes at great expense to the Medical Center considering the losses that are incurred in one of the clinics (“Tax exemption granted to nonprofit…” 1997). The article An Organizational Ethics Decision-Making Process by William Nelson (2005) looks at the steps that can be undertaken by the Memorial Medical Center when making decisions that are related to ethics in order to satisfy all the stakeholders in making the decision of whether to close a loss making clinic or not.

The first that is to be considered is the clarification of the ethical issue in question and the parties involved should be able to declare the specific areas where they are in disagreement. The second step is the identification of all the affected stakeholders and giving them, the opportunity to express their views concerning the ethical issue involved. The third step is understanding the issues surrounding this ethical conflict and this requires fact finding missions to find out exactly what its root cause is, be it medical, financial, or the community.

The fourth step is the identification of the ethical perspectives that are relevant to this conflict from the different views from which it can be seen. The fifth step is the identification of the different options that are open to respond to this issue such as adopting new strategies to stop the financial drain that it has been experiencing. The sixth step is the analyzing the different opt