Dignity-Driven Decision Making: What Is It and Why Is It So Important?

Dignity-driven decision making (DDDM) is beginning to move into wider circulation in the U.S. health care system, driven by an accelerating push on two fronts: an imperative to substantially  improve the quality of services for individuals with advanced illness by recognizing and incorporating their stated preferences into all aspects of care, and the goal of establishing a degree of consistency and control over costs late in life.

Achieving both will be difficult, Vladeck acknowledged at the forum, in part because in the policy and research arena, “we’ve locked ourselves into narrow boxes” with regard to building highly-tailored models of care, with the result that “nobody knows what components are essential.”

The full article can be dowloaded via The National Academy of Social Insurance.