Earlier this year, Josh Rager, MD, MS, MA, Faculty Investigator at the IUCB, Karen Schmidt, MSN, RN, Project manager at the IUCB, and Peter Schwartz, MD, PhD, Director of the IUCB, recently published an article titled “Discordant Care and Decision Quality: Patients’ Reasons for Not Receiving Their Initial Test of Choice in Colorectal Cancer Screening” in Medical Decision Making.
In the article, the group analyzed qualitative responses to why patients received a different test than one they preferred at an earlier time point. This work highlights the causes of discordant care, such as: barriers of initial choice, benefits of alternative tests, insurance coverage, provider factors, health issues, and more. Their research suggests that there could be poor decision quality due to patient values and preferences being inadequately respected. Alternatively, it could be the case that patients made an informed decision upon learning more about the subject and changed their preferred treatment.
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