In this LearnScape, you are a purchase/procurement manager of a large hospital within the Bright Road Health Care System. Part of your responsibility is the actual purchasing (along with negotiating of costs, ensuring inventory, etc.) of pharmaceuticals for the hospital. You were foresighted enough to stockpile a quantity of a specific cancer drug when he/she heard rumblings that the manufacturer might stop producing the drug (due to cost not to medical issues).

The Procurement Manager of the rival hospital is in a bind and is hoping that you can help her out. Her hospital has a cancer patient who is on the specific drug that was just taken off the market and is in need of it; her hospital has none of the drug in stock and cannot order any. If the patient does not receive treatment in an expedient manner, the patient could have severe repercussions. This is the ethical dilemma. Your humanitarian side would like to provide the drug (after all, there is good PR in it and the administrators state that the hospital needs good publicity), but you also know thatthis hospital is in an area where there is a large prevalence of cancer, and routinely uses a lot of this drug because of its low tendency for side effects.

You know that the chance of getting a replacement for any drug given to the rival hospital would be small, and that any future purchases of new drugs will probably cost more and might not be as effective as this particular drug. You will work with the hospital's general counsel for any legal issues of sharing the drug, will consult with administration regarding community's perception of providing the drug, discuss with the chief of medical staff and CNO for their estimates for upcoming need of the drug, and check with the pharmacist on what would happen if the drug is not reinstated.

You will use the information gathered to consider the good of the individual vs. good of community, PR, humanitarian aspects, future cost of medicines, future availability of the medicine (availability of a drug similar in cost as well as specificity), and potential of the hospital needing the medicine in near future