EVALUATING ETHICS COMMITTEES - A VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDE

More than 60 percent of hospitals have ethics committees. The wide-sca le, voluntary adoption of these committees by hospitals is surprising, given the lack of data on their effectiveness. Little effort has been made to evaluate such committees, in part because of the lack of cons ensus on their purpose. The argument presented here is that, from a po licy perspective, the committees' purpose must bb to safeguard patient s' interests; a framework for evaluating committees based on that obje ctive is outlined. The criteria for evaluation include access, quality , and cost effectiveness. Existing data are used to assess ethics comm ittees, using these criteria. Based on available data, it is questiona ble whether ethics committees are performing any better or worse than alternative mechanisms to achieve the same goal.