Financial incentives may be effective in changing healthcare professional practice .
We found no evidence from review s that examined the effect of financial incentives on patient outcomes
BACKGROUND There is considerable interest in the effectiveness of financial incentives in the delivery of health care .
Incentives may be used in an attempt to increase the use of evidence -based treatments among healthcare professionals or to stimulate health professionals to change their clinical behaviour with respect to preventive , diagnostic and treatment decisions , or both .
Financial incentives are an extrinsic source of motivation and exist when an individual can expect a monetary transfer which is made conditional on acting in a particular way .
Since there are numerous review s performed within the healthcare area describing the effects of various types of financial incentives , it is important to summarise the effectiveness of these in an overview to discern which are most effective in changing health professionals ' behaviour and patient outcomes .
OBJECTIVES To conduct an overview of systematic review s that evaluates the impact of financial incentives on healthcare professional behaviour and patient outcomes .
Physician reimbursement by salary or fee-for-service: effect on physician practice behavior in a randomized prospective study.
We used a  resident continuity clinic  to compare prospect ively the impact of salary v fee-for-service reimbursement on physician practice behavior . This model allowed r and omization of physicians into salary and fee-for-service groups and separation of the effects of reimbursement from patient behavior . Physicians reimbursed by fee-for-services scheduled more visits per patient than did salaried physicians ( 3.69 visits v 2.83 visits , P less than .01 ) and saw their patients more often ( 2.70 visits v 2.21 visits , P less than .05 ) during the 9-month study . Almost all of this difference was because fee-for-service physicians saw more well patients than salaried physicians ( 1.42 visits and .99 visits per enrolled patient , respectively , P less than .01 ) . Evaluating visits by American Academy of Pediatrics ' guidelines indicated that fee-for-service physicians saw more patients for well-childcare than salaried physicians because they missed fewer recommended visits and scheduled visits in excess of those recommendations . Fee-for-service physicians also provided better continuity of care than salaried physicians by attending a larger percentage of all visits made by their patients ( 86.6 % of visits v 78.3 % of visits , P less than .05 ) , and by encouraging fewer emergency visits per enrolled patient ( 0.12 visits v 0.22 visits , P less than .01 ) . Physicians ' interest in private practice , as determined by their career plans , correlated significantly with total number of patients enrolled ( r = .48 , P less than .05 ) and total clinic patients seen by each resident during the study ( r = .40 , P less than .05 ) . ( ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS
Financial incentives may be effective in changing healthcare professional practice .
We found no evidence from review s that examined the effect of financial incentives on patient outcomes
BACKGROUND There is considerable interest in the effectiveness of financial incentives in the delivery of health care .
Incentives may be used in an attempt to increase the use of evidence -based treatments among healthcare professionals or to stimulate health professionals to change their clinical behaviour with respect to preventive , diagnostic and treatment decisions , or both .
Financial incentives are an extrinsic source of motivation and exist when an individual can expect a monetary transfer which is made conditional on acting in a particular way .
Since there are numerous review s performed within the healthcare area describing the effects of various types of financial incentives , it is important to summarise the effectiveness of these in an overview to discern which are most effective in changing health professionals ' behaviour and patient outcomes .
OBJECTIVES To conduct an overview of systematic review s that evaluates the impact of financial incentives on healthcare professional behaviour and patient outcomes .