Can You Get What You Pay For? Pay-For-Performance and the Quality of Healthcare Providers

Kathleen Mullen, Richard G. Frank and Meredith B. Rosenthal

No 14886, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Despite the popularity of pay-for-performance (P4P) among health policymakers and private insurers as a tool for improving quality of care, there is little empirical basis for its effectiveness. We use data from published performance reports of physician medical groups contracting with a large network HMO to compare clinical quality before and after the implementation of P4P, relative to a control group. We consider the effect of P4P on both rewarded and unrewarded dimensions of quality. In the end, we fail to find evidence that a large P4P initiative either resulted in major improvement in quality or notable disruption in care.

JEL-codes: D23 H51 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lab and nep-soc
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Kathleen J. Mullen & Richard G. Frank & Meredith B. Rosenthal, 2010. "Can you get what you pay for? Pay-for-performance and the quality of healthcare providers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(1), pages 64-91.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14886.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Can you get what you pay for? Pay‐for‐performance and the quality of healthcare providers (2010)
Working Paper: Can You Get What You Pay For? Pay-For-Performance and the Quality of Healthcare Providers (2009)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14886

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14886

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().