Reforming Payments to Healthcare Providers: The Key to Slowing Healthcare Cost Growth While Improving Quality?

Mark McClellan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2011, vol. 25, issue 2, pages 69-92

Abstract: This paper focuses on a broad movement toward a fundamentally different way of paying healthcare providers. The approach reaches beyond the old dichotomies about whether healthcare providers are reimbursed on a fee-for-service or a "capitated" or per-person payment. Instead, these reforms seek to create direct linkages between payments to healthcare providers and measures of the quality and efficiency of care. After an overview of payment reforms for healthcare providers and their welfare implications, this paper discusses a range of empirical studies. These often small-scale studies suggest that provider payment reforms in conjunction with greater attention to improving measurements of care quality and outcomes can have a significant impact on quality of care and, in some cases, resource use and costs of care.

JEL-codes: I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.25.2.69
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (2) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.25.2.69 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:jecper:v:25:y:2011:i:2:p:69-92

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Perspectives is edited by David H. Autor

More articles in Journal of Economic Perspectives from American Economic Association
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Jane Voros ().