4 BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

In Health and in Sickness: Irrationality of the Decision-Making Process

Abstract

Behavioral economics is a discipline that blends concepts from psychology and economics. It asserts that people’s decision-making process is not rational; instead it is full of bias (Voyer, 2015). Understanding the common biases that affect the decision process and devising strategies to optimize decision-making for the benefit of the consumer are the main goals of behavioral economics (Cohen et al., 2016). The healthcare environment is complex, and the decision-making process is often biased both for patients and providers. The use of strategies based on behavioral economics can substantially improve care and support optimal decision- making (Courtney et al., 2014; Volpp, 2016).

Keywords

behavioral economics

healthcare

decision-making

social environment

bias

libertarian paternalism

patient-centered

shaping

framing

social norms

social influences

COVID-19/global pandemic

government

sudden infant death (safe sleep practices)

messenger effect

defaults

behavior

Rapid Process Improvement Workshop

heuristics

Loss aversion

Present bias

hyperbolic discounting

reciprocity

choice overload

salience

identifiable victim effect

Quality Improvement

Mindspace

Behavioral Insights Team

visual workplace

IKEA effect,

feedback

Lean model

Intervention designers

Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA)

Triple Aim

About

Liliane de Aguiar-Rocha

Liliane de Aguiar-Rocha

DBH, BCBA, QBA

Dr. Liliane Rocha completed her graduate training in behavior analysis at the Graduate Center (CUNY), and her doctoral degree in behavioral health, with a focus on integrated care at the Cummings Graduate Institute for Behavioral Health. She has broad interests in Behavior Analysis, particularly in how behavior analytic strategies can be used in large scale to improve systems in healthcare. She is interested in improving the care for people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) starting at the pediatrician’s office.  

She has worked with behavior analysis, in a variety of settings, including a Psychiatric Hospital leading a team of behavior analysts who designed behavior interventions to decrease the use of restrictive interventions during acute psychiatric admission. At the hospital, she also had the opportunity to work in several performance management and quality improvement projects where she had the opportunity to exercise her OBM (Organizational Behavior Management) skills. She is a certified ACT Matrix facilitator and uses the Pro-social Matrix in crisis-management trainings.

At this time, she is a faculty member in the doctoral of Behavioral Health program at Cummings Graduate Institute in Arizona and a Lecturer at Saint Joseph’s College, in Long Island, NY where she is part of the ABA graduate certificate program faculty. She is a consultant who provides consultation to local schools and hospitals, as well as international consultation in Brazil, her native country. She is interested in ways to bring behavioral analytic treatment to areas with difficult access to BCBAs. To that end, she has developed a telehealth practice, where she supervises behavior analysts serving children with ASD in Brazil.