Shared Decision Making & Medical Costs

The strongest argument for shared decision making is that patients have a fundamental right to understand all the reasonable medical options and the arguments for and against each option. Simply put, informing and involving patients in medical decisions is the right thing to do. The majority of people want to make decisions about their health care -rather than be told what to do or make decisions without a complete understanding of the situation and the options. While pursuing shared decision making is the right thing to do for ethical reasons, given the serious concerns about escalating health care costs, many people want to know how increased use of shared decision making would affect the cost of health care. Some people have hypothesized that patients who are informed and involved will demand more care and interventions, thus accelerating the upward spiral of health care costs. In fact, there is essentially no evidence to substantiate this concern. Rather, five separate bodies of evidence suggest that routinely informing and actively involving patients in their medical care is likely to be cost neutral or even reduce health care costs: