Introducing high-cost health care to patients: dentists' accounts of offering dental implant treatment

摘要

ObjectivesThe decision-making process within health care has been widely researched, with shared decision-making, where both patients and clinicians share technical and personal information, often being cited as the ideal model. To date, much of this research has focused on systems where patients receive their care and treatment free at the point of contact (either in government-funded schemes or in insurance-based schemes). Oral health care often involves patients making direct payments for their care and treatment, and less is known about how this payment affects the decision-making process. It is clear that patient characteristics influence decision-making, but previous evidence suggests that clinicians may assume characteristics rather than eliciting them directly. The aim was to explore the influences on how dentists' engaged in the decision-making process surrounding a high-cost item of health care, dental implant treatments (DITs).