Professor Russell Mannion in a new an article published in the International Journal of Health Policy and Management warns of the dangers of expanding payment for performance schemes in health care in the absence of a robust evidence base.
He comments:
"Many countries are turning their attention to the use of explicit financial incentives to drive desired improvements in healthcare performance. However, we have only a weak evidence-base to inform policy in this area. The research challenge is to generate robust evidence on what financial incentives work, under what circumstances, for whom and with what intended and unintended consequences".
Mannion, R. (2014) Take the money and run: the challenges of designing and evaluating financial incentives in health care, International Journal of Health Policy and Management, Vol 2 , first published online 5 February 2014.