The IntegratedEthicsTM Facility Workbook: An Evaluation Tool to Support Health Care Ethics Program Implementation and Quality Management

Background: IntegratedEthicsTM (IE) establishes a new model for ethics programs, with the goal of continuously improving “ethics quality” in health care. This article describes the IntegratedEthics Facility Workbook (IEFW), an evaluation tool developed by the National Center for Ethics in Health Care (NCEHC) to help health care facilities improve ethics quality in their organization. The workbook helps facilities to evaluate their local ethics programs relative to specific quality standards established for the IE model. This article describes the origins of the quality standards established for the IE model, explains IEFW conceptual underpinnings and tool development, illustrates how ethics programs use the tool to drive local program quality improvement, and provides longitudinal IEFW national results (2008–2011) for Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) IE programs. Methods: The project uses descriptive analysis of IEFW data submitted by VA facilities from 2008 through 2011. Results: In VA, longitudinal I...