Pay for Performance Linked to Modest Improvements in Hospital Quality

According to an article through Medscape Medical News, hospitals engaged in pay for performance showed modest improvements in quality.  Medscape Medical News was referencing a report in the <i>New England Journal of Medicine</i>.

"Our study demonstrates that financial incentives can be successful at changing hospital and physician behavior to accelerate the rate of quality improvement," lead author Peter Lindenauer, MD, MSc, medical director of clinical and quality informatics at Baystate Health and assistant professor of medicine at Tufts University in Springfield, Massachusetts, told Medscape.

"Given that the incentives were small and the baseline performance high (making it harder to detect an effect), the fact that some improvements were observed suggests that financial incentives may play a beneficial role in healthcare…." Dr. Lindenauer said. "The small gains in process of care measures observed in the study are unlikely to have translated into meaningful improvements in outcomes."

In the New England Journal of Medicine study, the 207 pay-for-performance hospitals were compared with the 406 hospitals (control hospitals) with public reporting only. Multivariable modeling estimated the improvement attributable to financial incentives after adjustment for baseline performance and other hospital characteristics.