More on How P4P Can Backfire
From the Wall Street Journal,by Katherine Hobson:
[I]n the case of the elderly, [quality indicators] may lead to “unintended harms,” according to a commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In general, these indicators encourage physicians to provide more care deemed appropriate, not to pare back on care that is inappropriate, says Sei Lee, an author of the piece and an assistant professor of medicine in the geriatrics division at the University of California, San Francisco. (His co-author is Louise Walter, also at UCSF.)
That means a hypothetical doctor who prescribed medications to everyone who came in the door, whether they needed them or not, could look great according to the indicators, Lee tells the Health Blog.
If you create a system that dictates how people are conpensated, people will always game that system.
Katherine Hobsen always tracks down the most interesting and important health stories. In this one, we have yet another instance of twisted incentives robbing the patients of choices and good care.