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Physicians’ incentives, patients’ characteristics, and quality of care: a systematic experimental comparison of performance-pay systems

Jeannette Brosig‐Koch et al.

International Journal of Health Economics and Management2025https://doi.org/10.1007/s10754-025-09390-xarticle
AJG 2
Weight
0.41

What the paper says

How performance pay affects physicians' medical service provision and the quality of care is relevant for researchers and policy-makers alike. This paper systematically studies how performance pay, complementing either fee-for-service or capitation, affects physicians' medical service provision and the quality of care for heterogeneous patients. Using a series of controlled behavioral experiments with physicians and students, we test the incentive effect of performance pay at a within-subject level. We consider a performance pay scheme which grants a discrete bonus if a quality threshold is reached, which varies with the patients' severity of illness. We find that performance pay significantly reduces non-optimal service provision and enhances the quality of care. Effect sizes depend on the patients' severity of illness and whether performance pay is blended with fee-for-service or capitation. Health policy implications, including a cost benefit analysis of introducing performance pay, are discussed.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10754-025-09390-x

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@article{jeannette2025,
  title        = {{Physicians’ incentives, patients’ characteristics, and quality of care: a systematic experimental comparison of performance-pay systems}},
  author       = {Jeannette Brosig‐Koch et al.},
  journal      = {International Journal of Health Economics and Management},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10754-025-09390-x},
}

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Physicians’ incentives, patients’ characteristics, and quality of care: a systematic experimental comparison of performance-pay systems

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Evidence weight

0.41

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.25 × 0.4 = 0.10
M · momentum0.55 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.