Understand a critical element of the healthcare field with SAGE Reference’s monumental, new Encyclopedia of Medical Decision Making

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC (June 18, 2009) Decisions made by physicians, patients, insurers, and policy makers determine the quality of our healthcare. And that quality depends on counterbalancing risks, benefits, and competing objectives, such as maximizing life expectancy versus optimizing quality of life, or prioritizing economic realities over quality of care.

SAGE Reference’s essential, new two-volume Encyclopedia of Medical Decision Making is the only available reference source to comprehensively reveal how medical and healthcare decisions are actually made—and constrained—and how physician, healthcare management, and patient decision making can be improved to optimize health outcomes. Written by an international team of experts, more than 300 highly accessible A-to-Z authoritative entries explore important aspects of medical decision making, such as:

• bioethics
• health policy and economics
• disease management simulation modeling
• the psychology of decision making
• shared and team medical decision making
• social, moral, and religious factors
• end-of-life decision making
• assessing patient preference and adherence

Utility assessment techniques facilitating quantitative medical decision making are examined, as well as outcome measures used to judge the quality or impact of medical decisions. Biostatistical methods used in prescriptive decision making, along with the mechanisms for defining medical decision-making algorithms, are also discussed.

All public and academic libraries will be sure to purchase SAGE’s Encyclopedia of Medical Decision Making so students, researchers and scholars have access to this valuable and unique resource.

General Editor Michael W. Kattan is Chairman of the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at Cleveland Clinic and Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Associate Editor Mark E. Cowen, MD, is Chief of Clinical Decision Services at the St. Joseph Mercy Health System, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine. A privately owned corporation, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com

November 2009 

ISBN: 978-1-4129-5372-6         Print Price: $375           TWO -VOLUME SET

eISBN: 978-1-4129-7199-7       Electronic Price: $465

Press Release Contact:
Mary Kay Jezzini
SAGE Publicist
212-352-1404
publicity@sagepub.com