Shared decision-making in the Netherlands--current state and future perspectives

Dutch government policy is aimed at introducing regulated competition among health care providers and among health care insurers and at empowering patients for being involved in decision-making in health care. Along with this, many Dutch organisations have been created to foster patient orientation within health care and increase patients' power for medical decision-making. The challenge is to deliver reliable and well-balanced information for patients and the public, eg. in patient-tailored web-based formats. The approach of patient participation in medical decision-making has been formally defined in a specific law (WGBO), and the principle of recognising the patient's view is increasingly reflected in the national guidelines for health care professionals. The theme of patient participation in medical decision making is a fairly widespread research topic theme in the Netherlands, including mutual exchange among the researchers in a vivid network. The real bottleneck is perhaps the implementation of patient participation into professional practice. Some recommendations for facilitating a change are made.