Shared decision making in the Netherlands, is the time ripe for nationwide, structural implementation?

Abstract

What about policy regarding SDM? The Dutch health care system has been reformed in 2006 to make it more patient-oriented and demand-driven. We shortly describe four strategies of this health care reform. Although research projects are now fully spread over the country, a coordinated research agenda on SDM is lacking. What about tools - decision support for patients? The Dutch governmental healthcare internet portal for patients hosts 16 patient decision aids. What about professional interest and implementation? There is quite a strong patient participation movement in the Netherlands, on macro and meso level. Limited effort, related to the local research projects has been put into training professionals in SDM skills. What does the future look like? We need concerted action on the level of educating health care professionals, empowering patients, making patient decision aids easily accessible, supporting the professionals in this new task, and measuring the process of SDM in performance indicators used in quality assurance. The Dutch Platform for SDM that will be launched in Maastricht in June 2011 is therefore a timely and relevant initiative.