ABSTRACT
This entry examines some of the decision-making processes found in the healthcare industry. It reviews a set of paradigms to assist the understanding of emerging healthcare decision-making behaviors. The concept of paradigms should be differentiated from the concept of models. A model is an empirical, sometimes idealistic representation of a particular process in the real world. However, a paradigm embodies a distinctive and more or less coherent set of general ideas and principles, whether intellectual, ideological, ethical, or otherwise, which serve to make sense of and provide guidance for the understanding of the process.
