Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making
-
A specialty referral is a common but complex decision that often requires a primary care provider to balance his or her own interests with those of the patient. ⋯ In the setting of a referral for an asymptomatic but serious condition, out-of-pocket costs are important to patients; however, they also value specialists who collaborate and communicate well with their primary care providers and who practice shared decision making. Patients have wide variability in preferences for specialists, and referral decisions should be individualized.
-
Comparative Study
Economic Evaluation of Pediatric Telemedicine Consultations to Rural Emergency Departments.
Comprehensive economic evaluations have not been conducted on telemedicine consultations to children in rural emergency departments (EDs). ⋯ From a health care payer perspective, telemedicine consultations to health care providers of acutely ill and injured children presenting to rural EDs are cost-saving (base-case and more than half of Monte Carlo simulation iterations) or cost-effective compared with telephone consultations.
-
Multiple embryo transfers in in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment increase the number of successful pregnancies while elevating the risk of multiple gestations. IVF-associated multiple pregnancies exhibit significant financial, social, and medical implications. Clinicians need to decide the number of embryos to be transferred considering the tradeoff between successful outcomes and multiple pregnancies. ⋯ A machine learning-based decision support system would be useful in improving the success rates of IVF treatment.