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Most Physician Salary Incentives Linked to Patient Satisfaction
WASHINGTON—When it comes to physician incentives, the carrot appears to be winning out over the stick. Surveys of more than 12,000 physicians done in 1997 and 1999 found that while 24% of physicians faced reimbursement incentives based on patient-satisfaction surveys, only 14% faced incentives based on economic profiling, which compares a particular physician’s use of resources with resource use by other physicians.
“Most physicians are not directly subject to the type of financial incentives that are commonly perceived to conflict with patients’ interests,” said Paul B.
Ginsburg, PhD, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, which commissioned the study. The use of financial incentives has remained fairly stable for several years, the survey revealed. Among physicians in staff- or group-model HMOs, 70% were the most likely to face some forms of financial incentives, compared with just 16% of doctors in small-group practices.
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