Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Provinces across Canada aim to encourage patients to be active participants in their care. This includes increasing shared decision-making between patients and their health care providers. Shared decision-making can play an important role in helping patients with knee osteoarthritis decide whether to undergo surgery or use non-surgical treatments. There are many options available to support shared decision-making. Some health systems provide decision support tools to patients before their appointments, others pay for additional appointments so patients and providers have the time to make an informed decision. However, these options may require additional investment. Given that health systems have constrained budgets, the value of investments needs to be considered. This research explores how much shared decision-making is valued for treatment decision making for knee osteoarthritis. An online survey asked members of the Canadian public to choose between hypothetical appointments with different arthritis specialists. By answering several questions, we determined how much shared decision-making was valued. Our results demonstrate that people were willing to wait longer to see a specialist who put more effort into shared decision-making. People were also willing to see a specialist whose patients had poorer health outcomes if it meant they put more effort into shared decision-making. These results can be used to determine whether value of shared decision-making in this context is worth the required investment by health systems.