Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making

 
Improving the quality of medical decisions
Mission

The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making is a non-profit organization dedicated to assuring that people understand their choices and have the information they need to make sound decisions affecting their health and well being.


To accomplish our mission:

We promote understanding and adoption of informed medical decision-making.

We organize and frame medical evidence in an unbiased manner to help people evaluate their options, particularly in instances where differences in individual preferences and perspectives are likely to affect personal choice.

We sponsor research to expand knowledge of how to improve decision quality in health care.






Medical Evidence
The science of medical care is advancing at a rate that makes the delivery of quality patient-focused care an enormous challenge. New information about disease biology and genetics, rapid development of new tests and treatments, and the shift in disease from largely acute to largely chronic are all important contributing factors.


Patient Perspective
Medical research on practice variation indicates that patient perspectives are often less important in treatment decisions than factors having little to do with patients or their illnesses, such as geography, economics or supplier-induced demands.

The Foundation brings the patient perspective into focus by interviewing real patients who can talk about the choices they made and why. Without the perspective of the patient, we cannot achieve a quality medical decision.


 Informed Medical Decisions
The Foundation believes that it is the convergence of the two concepts: medical evidence and patient perspectives that create a truly informed decision in medical care.
The Informed Patient

The Foundation acknowledges the right and responsibility of patients to be fully informed and to play the lead role in decisions that affect their health.
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Phone:(617)367-2000    Fax:(617)367-0315
© 2006 Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, Inc 40 Court Street, Suite 300, Boston, MA 02108