Pay for performance (P4P) is becoming increasingly popular in the health care sector as a tool for encouraging performance (especially quality) improvement. Evidence about the effect of policies in hospitals is rare and generally confined to developed countries. The Iranian hospital grading system, which links the charges hospitals can make for patient stay to the results of their annual perfor...

OBJECTIVE To test whether pay for performance (P4P) is an effective method to improve adolescent substance use disorder treatment implementation and efficacy. DESIGN Cluster randomized trial. SETTING Community-based treatment organizations. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-nine community-based treatment organizations, 105 therapists, and 986 adolescent patients (953 with complete data). INTERVENTION...

INTRODUCTION Childhood vaccination rates in Manitoba populations with low socioeconomic status (SES) fall significantly below the provincial average. This study examined the impact of a pay-for-performance (P4P) program called the Physician Integrated Network (PIN) on health inequity in childhood vaccination rates. METHODS The study used administrative data housed at the Manitoba Centre for H...

BACKGROUND The limited number of existing previous studies of the distribution of quality under NHS Pay-for-performance (P4P) by income deprivation have not analysed the relationship at the individual level and have been restricted to assessing P4P in the primary care setting. In this study, we set out to examine how achievement of P4P 'quality measures' for which NHS hospitals were paid was di...

OBJECTIVES In order to make tuberculosis (TB) treatment more effective and to lower the transmission rate of the disease, the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) in Taiwan implemented the 'Pay-for-Performance on Tuberculosis' programme (P4P on TB) in 2004. This study investigates the effectiveness of the P4P system in terms of cure rate and length of treatment. METHODS This retrospecti...

BACKGROUND While health care costs continue to rise and shift toward employers, a parallel improvement in health care quality has not been evident. As a means to repair this apparent disconnect, pay for performance (P4P) initiatives are being implemented across the country. OBJECTIVE To explore the need for P4P in the current state of health care delivery and review the design, components, an...

BACKGROUND Emergency department (ED) overcrowding continues to be a well-publicized problem in a number of countries. In British Columbia, a province in Canada, an ED pay-for-performance (ED P4P) program was initiated in 2007 to create financial incentives for hospitals to reduce patients' ED length of stay (ED LOS). This study's objectives are to determine if the ED P4P program is associated w...

Many health care purchasers are trying to link health care spending to quality and efficiency through pay-for-performance (P4P) programs. This report examines the current and planned P4P activities of state Medicaid programs, based on a survey and follow-up interviews with state Medicaid directors and their staffs as well as review of related documents. The authors found that more than half of ...

Antibiotic resistance is a major threat to public health worldwide. As the healthcare sector's use of antibiotics is an important contributor to the development of resistance, it is crucial that physicians only prescribe antibiotics when needed and that they choose narrow-spectrum antibiotics, which act on fewer bacteria types, when possible. Inappropriate use of antibiotics is nonetheless wide...

BACKGROUND Pay for performance (P4P) schemes have become increasingly popular innovations in primary care and have generated questions about their effect on improving quality of care. AIMS To provide a brief outline of the international evidence on the relationship between P4P schemes and quality improvement. METHOD We conducted a literature search using relevant databases and reference lis...