About the Center for Informed Choice

The Center for Informed Choice is dedicated to one simple proposition: that patients deserve to be equal partners in making choices about their health care.  We know that when patients and their families have good information about procedures, treatments, and therapies, they make good decisions – decisions that reflect their values and preferences.  Our research shows that 40 percent of the time, patients who participate in informed choice or “shared decision-making” choose less invasive, less risky, less costly procedures.  Most importantly, research has shown that these patients have better clinical outcomes and higher rates of satisfaction.

We strive to advance informed choice (as opposed to the traditional legal doctrine of informed consent) by collaborating on decision aids, implementing shared decision-making with health care partners around the country – and around the world – and working with policy leaders at the state and national level.

What is Informed Choice?  The Center for Informed Choice is leading the way down a path of going above and beyond offering an informed consent for procedures, and instead giving patients the power of informed choice.

An Informed choice is a high quality decision made by a patient that takes two important factors into consideration: knowledge and values. In order to make an informed choice, the patient must be given unbiased medical information, and allowed to consider their personal values and preferences for their own care.

Shared Decision Making. The Center has successful and world-renowned clinical models in Shared Decision Making at the Spine Center and in the Comprehensive Breast Program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC).  Patients also have access to a number of decision-making aids and counselors at DHMC’s first-in-the-nation Center for Shared Decision-Making.

Center Leadership.  Dale Collins, MD, MS, is a board certified plastic surgeon, a Professor of Surgery and of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and the Medical Director of the Comprehensive Breast Program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.  Co-Director Dr. Hilary Llewellyn-Thomas, PhD, is a professor of Community and Family Medicine and the Founding Research Director of DHMC's Center for Shared Decision Making.