Incentives & What They Can Encourage

The reimbursement system “tolerates and even financially rewards poor performance by hospitals that fail to prevent hospital-acquired complications,'’ write the report’s authors, Dr. Heidi Wald and Dr. Andrew Kramer, health care policy researchers at the University of Colorado at Denver. - December 19, 2007, NY Times Making Hospitals Pay for Their Mistakes

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/making-hospitals-pay-for-their-mistakes/

In our work place we do not often think of incentives as something connected to fundamental issues. They often become clever or simplistic solutions to what are truly fragmented apparent issues instead of deeper needs.

This article sites specific examples of how incentives in hospitals may actually create harm. It is worth looking at for an understanding of a more pervasive issue. The above url will also give you some blog responses that disagree and some that do not.

The article suggests that in most businesses, such reward for poor performance does not occur. However, I suggest that hospitals as businesses are presently emanating many other business models. And, that the use of incentives in many companies today (often driven by an outdated mentality), deserve a closer look.

Once again, health care, the well-being of an organization and its ability to communicate are connected for all of us.

Sal