Aligning Financial and Other Incentives: Introduction
One of the most challenging issues facing healthcare centers around the design of financial incentives to support improvements in healthcare and policies for information sharing. There are many different perspectives about the design of incentives, including how these incentives should be structured and paid for, and what behaviors to incentivize.
For example, there is debate around incentivizing improved patient outcomes versus incentivizing or supporting information technology adoption. While most stakeholders agree that the end goal is improving healthcare quality, safety and efficiency, organizations employ different approaches for arriving at that goal. Some prefer to incentivize quality outcomes only, while others preferred also to support the adoption and effective use of health IT as an efficient infrastructure for quality improvement and measurement.
Currently, there is consensus regarding the best approach, and there is no consensus that only one approach will work. More study is needed to examine initiatives that have employed both approaches to identify their benefits and drawbacks. Many believe that incentives cannot be meaningful or appropriately aligned without objective information quantifying the benefits of health IT adoption and identifying the stakeholders to whom those benefits accrue. The Blueprint recommends that payors and providers work together toward meaningful discussion, research, and demonstration projects that can convincingly measure these benefits.
This module of the Toolkit provides:
- A shared vision for aligning financial and other incentives
- Guiding principles for aligning incentives
- Broad strategies and actions to further study this issue and arrive at consensus
- Best practices and community experiences in aligning incentives
- Comprehensive resources and tools to help you understand the different options and effects of incentives
- Consensus legislation related to incentives
- Our leadership, working groups and staff who are contributing to this area of work.
