Short discussion:

You are the risk manager for Orlando Radiology. Your organization operates 10 medical imaging facilities throughout the Orlando, FL region. As the risk manager, you are responsible for safety, risk management, insurance programs, and workers' compensation. You report to the Vice President of Human Resources. Because of increased injuries and associated workers' compensation costs with sonographers and radiologic technologists, the Vice President of Human Resources convinced you to implement an incentive program to curtail injuries.

The incentive program denotes that all employees at the medical imaging facilities will receive a $100 bonus in January if their facility did not have any workers' compensation claims during the year (January 1 - December 31). If an employee is injured and a claim is filed that employee does not qualify for the bonus nor does any employee in that facility qualify for the bonus. The VP of Human Resources argued the incentive program would bolster peer-support, would encourage safe behaviors, and would reduce injuries. You agreed to the program as you will receive a bonus of $5000 if 2 or fewer facilities report and file a workers' compensation claim.

As of December 29th, your organization has had a fairly successful year. Two facilities reported worker injuries and filed workers' compensation claims. The employees at these facilities will not qualify for the bonus, to be paid in January. At this time, you are on schedule to obtain a $5000 bonus, to be paid in January. This is timely as your spouse just recently lost his/her job. Near the end of the day on December 30th, you receive a phone call from a worker claiming she hurt her back while assisting a patient from a wheelchair. She indicated she is in severe pain and needs to seek medical treatment. However, she does not want to tell her supervisor nor file an incident report or claim because she wants to receive her bonus. And, she indicated that she does not want to keep her co-workers at her facility from receiving their bonus. She tells you that she will apply this to her medical insurance and won't mention it to her supervisor so that she and her co-workers receive their bonus. You need to make a decision as to how you will handle this situation, knowing that if you report the incident and file a claim she will not get her bonus and her co-workers will not get their bonus, even though they are only a few days from qualifying. Further, if you report the incident/claim, you will not receive your $5000 bonus.

What do you do now?

Respond to one other response in the discussion activity. Be sure to discuss whether or not you agree with the response, whether or not he/she chose a moral and ethical course of action and whether it was consistent with professional codes of conduct related to the safety profession.