 Changing health care provider performance through measurementKenneth Leonard () and Melkiory C. Masatu Social Science & Medicine, 2017, vol. 181, issue C, 54-65 Abstract: Can the quality of care be improved by repeated measurement? We show that measuring protocol adherence repeatedly over ten weeks leads to significant improvements in quality immediately and up to 18 months later without any additional training, equipment, supplies or material incentives. 96 clinicians took part in a study which included information, encouragement, scrutiny and repeated contact with the research team measuring quality. We examine protocol adherence over the course of the study and for 45 of the original clinicians 18 months after the conclusion of the project. Health workers change their behavior significantly over the course of the study, and even eighteen months later demonstrate a five percentage point improvement in quality. The dynamics of clinicians’ reactions to this intervention suggest that quality can be improved by the repeated measurement by external peers in a way that provides reminders of expectations. Keywords: Quality of care; Low income countries; Results based financing; The Hawthorne effect; Altruism; Pro-social motivation; Supportive supervision (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:181:y:2017:i:c:p:54-65 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.03.041 Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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