A Pitfall in Utility Assessment — Patients' Undisclosed Investment Decisions

Jørgen Hilden, Paul P. Glasziou and J. Dik F. Habbema

Medical Decision Making, 1992, vol. 12, issue 1, 39-43

Abstract: Among those decisions that may be made by a patient in response to an illness, the authors single out a certain class. contingent investment decisions. They are characterized by the patient's committing him- or herself, on the basis of prognostic counseling, to a certain action or non-action that he or she may regret in retrospect Examples show that, when assessing utilities, the decision analyst runs a risk of handling such investment decisions incorrectly, unless they are made explicit and incorporated into the medical decision process. The anomaly is explained as a violation of the structural rules for decision trees and is also interpreted in terms of "the price of prognostic ignorance," a quantity closely related to the expected utility value of perfect information. Key words: decision theory; physician-patient relations, patient compliance; prognosis; risk-taking, quality of life; utility theory; patients' decisions, decision trees. (Med Decis Making 1992;12:39-43)

Date: 1992
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:12:y:1992:i:1:p:39-43

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X9201200107

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