The need to improve both the quality and the safety of health care in the United States is well documented. Traditional strategies to stimulate improvement include regulation, measurement of performance and subsequent feedback, and marketplace competition. Despite limited evidence, public reporting of hospital quality data and pay for performance have emerged as two of the most widely advocated strategies for accelerating quality improvement (Lindenauer, 2007). Quality health care is very important to both physicians and patients because in essence everyone wants to be in good health in order to live a long quality life. The United States has a lot of work to do on providing its citizens with quality health care and one such innovation, …show more content…
Pay –for-performance offer voluntary physician participation, and do not undermine the economic viability of non-participating physician practices (AMA 2005). These programs also use accurate data and analytical methods in which a physician has full access to in order to comment and appeal the results. PFP programs provide new funds for positive incentives to physicians for their participation, progressive quality improvement, or attainment of goals within the program. The eligibility criteria for the incentives are fully explained to participating physicians. These programs support the goal of quality improvement across all participating physicians (AMA 2005).
Pay for performance programs directly affects physicians because they are getting paid for their performance based on evaluations from prior services. It is difficult to say what the impact of pay-for-performance will be, since it's so early in the game. However, because pay for performance programs is primarily concerned with how physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers get paid for their work, it is not likely to have a great effect on individual patients (Montgomery 2007). In fact it may benefit the patient because physicians will want to earn a higher compensation based on quality work. This will give physicians a greater incentive to perform above and beyond the scope of practice and the patient will gain from the quality of the