Decision Quality Initiative

Decision quality is defined as the extent to which treatment reflects the informed preferences of patients and is implemented. The goal of the decision quality instrument development project (DQ) is to provide an assessment of the quality of medical decisions across populations of patients. The instrument developed will be used to evaluate the extent to which patients are informed and make decisions that, on average, are consistent with their values. The DQ instrument will be used as an intervention or assessment if given to patients before they have made a decision to identify knowledge gaps to fill and patient priorities to incorporate. To develop these instruments, it is necessary to identify a core set of facts and values that are salient to the decision.