Improving Patient and Family Participation in Decision-Making In Primary Care

The Stoeckle Center has received funding from the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making to help support the implementation and evaluation of shared decision-making in primary care. This project involves the "prescription" of problem-specific information to patients during and after the office visit. Clinicians will be able to “prescribe” Shared Decision-Making videos to patients who are faced with routine screening options or health care treatment decisions.

During the office visit, the clinician can discuss the video with an eligible patient and, if the patient is interested, the clinician will give the patient a one-page description of the video program and write the “prescription” for it using the electronic medical record system. The clinician will also be able to prescribe the videos after the visit, once test results have come back, for example.

When the clinician “writes the prescription” in the electronic medical record system, a message will be sent automatically to the MGH Blum Patient & Family Learning Center. The Blum Center will then send the video to the patient. During the office visit, the clinician will inform the patient that the “prescription” will be sent to their address. If a video is prescribed after the visit, the clinician can indicate in their follow-up letter to the patient that a video will be sent to them, and the one-page video description can be included with the letter.