Decision Making in Health Care

Decision making is a crucial element in the field of medicine. The physician has to determine what is wrong with the patient and recommend treatment, while the patient has to decide whether or not to seek medical care, and go along with the treatment recommended by the physician. Health policy makers and health insurers have to decide what to promote, what to discourage, and what to pay for. Together, these decisions determine the quality of health care that is provided. Decision Making in Health Care is an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of the field of medical decision making - a rapidly expanding field that includes quantitative theoretical tools for modeling decisions, psychological research on how decisions are actually made, and applied research on how physician and patient decision making can be improved.

• Non-technical introduction to decision modeling techniques • Chapter on bioethics, not usually included • High-profile editors

Part I. Introduction and Theory: 1. Introduction Gretchen B. Chapman and Frank Sonnenberg; 2. Decision modeling techniques Mark S. Roberts and Frank Sonnenberg; 3. Utility assessment under expected utility and rank dependent utility assumptions John Miyamoto; 4. Evidence-based medicine John P. A. Ioannidis and Joseph Lau; Part II. Health Policy and Economics: 5. Linking health policy modeling with health policy formation and implementation David B. Matchar and Greg P. Samsa; 6. Cost-effectiveness analysis Louis B. Russell; Part III. Psychology of Medical Decision Making: 7. Cognitive processes and biases in medical decision making Gretchen B. Chapman and Arthur S. Elstein; 8. Physician judgments of uncertainty Neal V. Dawson; 9. Bioethics and medical decision making: what can they learn from each other? Joshua Cohen, David Asch and Peter Ubel; 10. Team medical decision making Caryn Christensen and Ann S. Abbott; Part IV. Applications: 11. Assessing patients’ preferences Anne M. Stiggelbout; 12. Applying utility assessment at the ‘bedside’ Mary K. Goldstein and Joel Tsevat; 13. Advances in presenting health information to patients Holly Brugge Jimison and Paul Phillip Sher; 14. Computer-assisted clinical decision support Antoine Geissbuhler and Randolph A. Miller; 15. Opportunities for applying psychological theory to improve medical decision making: two case histories Robert M. Hamm, Dewey C. Scheid, Wally R. Smith and Thomas G. Tape.

‘… this book presents a relatively broad overview of the field of decision making in health care … the chapters are well written and the book as a whole represents a valuable contribution to the field.’ Applied Cognitive Psychology