Shared decision making garnered national attention when it was among delivery system reforms contained in the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that was signed into law as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The much anticipated Supreme Court ruling on the fate of ACA will happen within a matter of weeks. Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, Benjamin W. Moulton, Foundation senior legal advisor, does not want policy makers to lose sight of how shared decision making is, and will continue to be, an important tool for improving health care delivery at the state level.
Ben Moulton discusses the basics of informed consent and the role it plays in shared decision making.
Ben believes there are four reasons why shared decision making is a critical component of health care delivery:
1) It is ethically the right thing to do
2) It is “perfected informed consent” and addresses the current drift in informed consent
3) It has been shown to help disadvantaged populations
4) It can impact both the quality and cost of health care delivery
For additional information, we encourage you to read the Kauffman Foundation’s ”Valuing Health Care: Improving Productivity and Quality” report and the National Academy for State Health Policy’s “Shared Decision Making: Advancing Patient-Centered Care Through State and Federal Implementation” report. In addition, we invite you to watch Ben provide an overview of these two reports in our YouTube video.
