Multicriteria decision analysis for health care decision making in Brazil: a scoping review

Abstract

Everyday health care professionals and managers are invited to make complex decisions involving multiple factors and alternatives with impacts on the health of the interested population. In this sense, the multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) considers the perception of different stakeholders about multiple attributes that can affect decision making, thus representing a decision support tool. Despite the relevance of MCDA, little is known about the application of different methods in health care in Brazil. To identify the characteristics of the Brazilian publications about MCDA in health care. A scoping review was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, and LILACS. Published primary studies, regardless of language, were included. This scoping review identified 45 studies in databases and one by manual search. Of these, 14 studies were evaluated by eligibility and included in scoping review: most of the publications were developed in health services (n=6) using MACBETH technic (n=6), including different actors (n=11), mainly for performance evaluation (n=6). Besides MACBETH, other methods of MCDA were TODIM (Interactive and Multicriteria Decision Making, in English), analytic hierarchy process, and discrete choice experiment. It was identified that the application of MCDA is still incipient in Brazilian health care. This review may contribute to the dissemination of knowledge about these methods and possibilities of applications among health professionals, as well as to alert them to the importance of using ethical, consistent and objective tools for more robust and transparent decision making.