Bernhoven: the implementation of the decision aids is a great success

Implementation in Bernhoven

At the end of 2015 we started the implementation of the inguinal hernia and gallbladder decision aids at the outpatient surgery of the Bernhoven hosipital.

Bernhoven is a distinctive hospital that aims to make health care cheaper by delivering more quality. This is an ambitious, hospital-wide project called: DROOM (Dutch meaning of this acronym is DREAM).

‘Bernhoven chooses a new approach to organize the healthcare by emphasizing quality resulting in cost reduction. Improved care, by caring less, is’fit-for-purpose care.’

We can reflect on a special collaboration with the outpatient surgeon, the past year. Making ‘Shared Decision- making’ part of the health care can be a hard and difficult process. The success of the past 10 months is plenty of reason to place everyone who contributed to the implementation in the spotlight.

Results

The majority of all the inguinal hernia and gallbladder patients were offered the decision aid last December. Of this group, almost all of the patients completed the decision aid.

The use of the decision aids resulted in a large quality improvement and in a reduction of the number of invasive procedures. This implies by applying decision aids that the appropriate care was furnished to each patient. The patient felt more involved in the selection of care as well as the follow up treatment.