Rewarding healthy behaviors--pay patients for performance.

Annals of Family Medicine
Joanne Wu

Abstract

Despite a considerable investment of resources into pay for performance, preliminary studies have found that it may not be significantly more effective in improving health outcome measures when compared with voluntary quality improvement programs. Because patient behaviors ultimately affect health outcomes, I would propose a novel pay-for-performance program that rewards patients directly for achieving evidence-based health goals. These rewards would be in the form of discounts towards co-payments for doctor's visits, procedures, and medications, thereby potentially reducing cost and compliance issues. A pilot study recruiting patients with diabetes or hypertension, diseases with clear and objective outcome measures, would be useful to examine true costs, savings, and health outcomes of such a reward program. Offering incentives to patients for reaching health goals has the potential to foster a stronger partnership between doctors and patients and improve health outcomes.

References

May 16, 2000·Archives of Family Medicine·M W KreuterF C Bull
Aug 25, 2006·The New England Journal of Medicine·Robert Steinbrook
Sep 13, 2007·Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine·Eric A FinkelsteinBen E Birken
Jul 30, 2008·Journal of General Internal Medicine·Judith A LongKevin G Volpp
Jan 7, 2009·Health Affairs·Kevin G VolppDavid Bangsberg
Jan 21, 2011·Journal of General Internal Medicine·Leslie K JohnKevin G Volpp
Apr 14, 2011·American Journal of Medical Quality : the Official Journal of the American College of Medical Quality·Judy Ying ChenRichard S Chung
Apr 15, 2011·The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews·Kate Cahill, Rafael Perera
Jun 15, 2011·Journal of Medical Ethics·Marianne PrombergerTheresa M Marteau

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Citations

Jun 8, 2013·Telemedicine Journal and E-health : the Official Journal of the American Telemedicine Association·Dayna E MinatodaniSteven J Berman
Jul 3, 2013·The Journal of Clinical Hypertension·J Rick Turner
Sep 20, 2019·Academic Emergency Medicine : Official Journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine·Rahul IyengarWilliam J Meurer

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