As people increasingly take a more active role in making decisions about their care, many turn to decision aids, or educational tools such as videos, pamphlets, and other online and print resources, to guide conversations with their clinicians about care options. But, how can patients and their families be sure that these tools best support important conversations and choices that reflect their personal health goals?
NQF is undertaking new work to set national standards for these proliferating resources, including determining clinical areas where more of these tools are needed, and developing a process for certifying high-quality decision aids for patients.
“Shared decision-making between patients and providers must become routine in order to transform the nation’s healthcare,” said Helen Burstin, MD, MPH, chief scientific officer of the National Quality Forum.
NQF’s work will develop standards to identify unbiased, comprehensive, evidence-based decision aids people can rely on to have well-informed discussions on care options with their clinicians.
A multistakeholder expert panel will make recommendations about how to improve the quality of tools that will empower patients to participate in decisions related to their care. The panel will define criteria for how to measure the quality of decision aids and shared decision-making.
Supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, this project builds upon work conducted by the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) Collaboration and the Washington State Health Authority’s efforts to specify standards for patient decision-support interventions.
NQF has commissioned a white paper on standards for decision aids and is conducting an environmental scan of current measures in shared decision-making, as well as measures that reflect patient understanding, to inform the work of the expert panel. NQF will issue a final report with the panel’s recommendations by early 2017.