Using Performance Incentives to Improve Medical Care Productivity and Health Outcomes

Paul Gertler and Christel Vermeerch

Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series from Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley

Abstract: We nested a large-scale field experiment into the national rollout of the introduction of performance pay for medical care providers in Rwanda to study the effect of incentives for health care providers. In order to identify the effect of incentives separately from higher compensation, we held constant compensation across treatment and comparison groups – a portion of the treatment group’s compensation was based on performance whereas the compensation of the comparison group was fixed. The incentives led to a 20% increase in productivity, and significant improvements in child health. We also find evidence of a strong complementarity between performance incentives and baseline provider skill.

Keywords: Medicine and Health Sciences; Performance Incentives; Results-Based Financing; Pay-for-Performance; Child Health; Maternal and Child Services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-02-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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Working Paper: Using Performance Incentives to Improve Medical Care Productivity and Health Outcomes (2013)
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