SMDM Annual Meeting Co-chairs Alan Schwartz and Brendan Delaney are pleased to announce the 2009 Annual Meeting will include a pre-meeting symposium on Saturday, October 17, 2009 in Hollywood, California, USA, titled, Getting Tools Used: Lessons from outside health care.

Session Description

Will decision aids have a vital role in health care reform? Patient decision support tools are well-validated and effective, but under used. The symposium will address this problem by examining the keys to success of decision support tools used in the US outside of health care. Investigators will present results of an in-depth investigation of four successful tools used to present evidence and promote informed choices by consumers.

Consumer Reports’s annual car buying guide, the FDA Nutrition Facts Panel, eBay, and US News’s America’s Best Colleges all provide decision support, some mandated by government, some entrepreneurial. Representatives from health care patient decision support producers will comment. The symposium will present key variables for success, and debate the implications for consumer and patient decision involvement in health care decisions.

Speakers

• Margaret Holmes-Rovner, PhD, Professor – Health Services Research, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
• Dale Shaller, MPA, Principal, Shaller Consulting, Stillwater, MN
• Dorothy Jeffress, M.B.A., M.S.W., M.A., Executive Director, The Center for Advancing Health, Washington, DC
• Richard Wexler, MD, Director, Patient Support Strategies, The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, Boston, MA
• Representative, Consumer Reports Health Rating (Invited)

Registration

Information about registration for the Society for Medical Decision Making meeting, including pre-meeting symposia and short courses, will soon be available at http://www.smdm.org/2009meeting.shtml