Gregory Michael Ouellet, MD, MHS

My ultimate goal is to impact the lives of older adults by optimizing complex decision-making, that is, finding which treatments maximize benefits to each individual patient, minimize harms, and avoid treatment burden. I have recently completed work to understand whether the benefits of multiple antihypertensives seen in clinical trials extends to complex older adults and have worked with my mentor, Dr. Mary Tinetti, on her national effort to transform decision-making for persons with multiple chronic conditions, Patient Priorities Care. My current work focuses on extending the science of complex decision-making to older adults with dementia, another vulnerable group in whom the benefits and harms of chronic disease treatments are unclear. As a first step, I am studying an exemplar of chronic disease decision-making for persons with dementia, i.e., whether or not to treat persons with dementia and atrial fibrillation with anticoagulants. To do so, I am investigating the benefits and harms of anticoagulants in this population and what factors surrogate decision-makers and clinicians consider important when facing this decision.