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Patient Preferences Versus Physicians’ Judgement: Does it Make a Difference in Healthcare Decision Making?

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Abstract

Clinicians and public health experts make evidence-based decisions for individual patients, patient groups and even whole populations. In addition to the principles of internal and external validity (evidence), patient preferences must also influence decision making. Great Britain, Australia and Germany are currently discussing methods and procedures for valuing patient preferences in regulatory (authorization and pricing) and in health policy decision making. However, many questions remain on how to best balance patient and public preferences with physicians’ judgement in healthcare and health policy decision making. For example, how to define evaluation criteria regarding the perceived value from a patient’s perspective? How do physicians’ fact-based opinions also reflect patients’ preferences based on personal values? Can empirically grounded theories explain differences between patients and experts—and, if so, how? This article aims to identify and compare studies that used different preference elicitation methods and to highlight differences between patient and physician preferences. Therefore, studies comparing patient preferences and physician judgements were analysed in a review. This review shows a limited amount of literature analysing and comparing patient and physician preferences for healthcare interventions and outcomes. Moreover, it shows that methodology used to compare preferences is diverse. A total of 46 studies used the following methods—discrete-choice experiments, conjoint analyses, standard gamble, time trade-offs and paired comparisons—to compare patient preferences with doctor judgements. All studies were published between 1985 and 2011. Most studies reveal a disparity between the preferences of actual patients and those of physicians. For most conditions, physicians underestimated the impact of intervention characteristics on patients’ decision making. Differentiated perceptions may reflect ineffective communication between the provider and the patient. This in turn may keep physicians from fully appreciating the impact of certain medical conditions on patient preferences. Because differences exist between physicians’ judgement and patient preferences, it is important to incorporate the needs and wants of the patient into treatment decisions.

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Acknowledgments

Funding: Axel Mühlbacher received a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice from the Commonwealth Fund, New York. The authors received no additional funding for this paper.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Author contributions

ACM designed the study and is the guarantor for the overall content. CJ extracted the relevant data from the databases, and assisted with the interpretation of the results. Both authors contributed equally to writing and revision of the paper and have given final approval of the version to be published.

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  1. IGM Institut Gesundheitsökonomie und Medizinmanagement, Hochschule Neubrandenburg, Brodaer Straße 2, 17033, Neubrandenburg, Germany

    Axel C. Mühlbacher & Christin Juhnke

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Mühlbacher, A.C., Juhnke, C. Patient Preferences Versus Physicians’ Judgement: Does it Make a Difference in Healthcare Decision Making?. Appl Health Econ Health Policy 11, 163–180 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-013-0023-3

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