Shared Decision Making Lowers Medical Expenditures and is Amplified in Racially-Ethnically Concordant Relationships

Shared decision-making is an increasingly popular approach to healthcare in which physicians and patients work together to arrive at treatment decisions that are best for the patient, using the patient’s values and preferences as well as evidence about available options. A study led by Timothy T. Brown, of  UC Berkeley School of Public Health, found that shared decision-making isn’t just good medicine, it also saves money: As shared decision-making goes up by three percent, health expenditures go down by about 10 percent. This impact doubles when Latinx patients are seen by Latinx doctors; and triples when Black patients are seen by Black doctors.