Rules and Principles

Rules

Rules-based healthcare is basically a list of detailed rules that must be followed during healthcare delivery . Many clinicians favour the prospect of using rules-based standards, because in the absence of rules they could be found to be negligent. When there are strict rules that need to be followed, the possibility of negligence is diminished. Having a set of rules can increase accuracy and reduce the ambiguity of care. The complexity of rules, however, can cause unnecessary complexity in the preparation and delivery of patient care.

Principles

Principles-based healthcare is based on generally accepted standards of care that form a conceptual basis for clinicians. A simple set of key standards and policies  ensure standards of care.  The fundamental advantage of principles-based healthcare is that its broad guidelines can be practical for a variety of circumstances. A potential disadvantage with principles-based healthcare is that lack of guidelines can produce inconsistent standards of care.

Although rules based healthcare has an important role in healthcare delivery the adoption of principle based healthcare helps address the variability within complex adaptive systems.