The Health Decision Sciences Centre at Massachusetts General Hospital is seeking to inform patients about the risks and benefits of various treatment options and help them come to a ‘shared decision’ with their medical team.
A process has been developed whereby doctors in primary and secondary care get hands-on training with 35 decision aids for common conditions, which they can access through the patient electronic medical record.
The clinician is then able to ‘prescribe’ an appropriate information tool for the patient before an important decision. This is then noted on the patient’s medical record for future follow-up.
A training programme is delivered to clinicians to teach them about the benefits of the decision aids and how to use them, in order to try and normalize their use.
The center works with 15 primary care practices (covering 200,000 people) and 120 hospital doctors per year. 16,000 of the prescriptions have been ordered to date, with initial results from an evaluation showing strong take-up and increased patient satisfaction.
Dr. Khalid Abulmajd
Healthcare Quality Consultant