Healthcare Corruption: An Interdisciplinary Problem

This chapter will draw on a range of disciplines: economic, political, legal and criminological to highlight the need for an interdisciplinary approach to understanding healthcare corruption. In this chapter, I critically examine the uses and obstacles to an interdisciplinary definition of healthcare corruption and note that the diversity of and responses to corruption, whilst useful, can sometimes make the prevention of corruption a complex problem to understand. It is, however, useful to consider different approaches to the complex, intractable problem of corruption where the power and legitimacy to act in an ethical, professional manner or engage in some act of corruption in the healthcare sector can lead to appropriate care or social harm, pain and/or slow death. Different approaches, the concept of power and the legitimacy to act are thus important elements in helping us understand healthcare corruption.