Pay for performance in Healthcare Services (Essay Sample)

Pay-For-Performance
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Pay-For-Performance
Workforce in any company, institution or organization is very paramount. Their output depends on their motivations they are being offered, managing approaches among other issues. Different sectors have embraced varied approaches to reward their workforce whenever they achieve the set objectives or produce outstanding results. In health care, one of the approaches widely used is the pay-for-performance (Hahn, 2006). This term describes a complementary health care payment model that involves offering financial rewards to health providers who achieves the set objective or even exceeds the quality benchmarks of the institution (Petersen et al. 2006). This is basically performance dependent model. Performance can be assessed using different methods including relative comparisons, or using benchmarks. In this approach, payments can be made at individual level, group or institutional level (Hahn, 2006).
Introduction of pay-for-performance has really affected reimbursement in health care services. As compared to other payment modes such as fee-for-service, this approach has altered the existing financial incentives the in turn influences physicians in one way or another. Based on practice, there are services reimbursed generously than others. Pay-for-performance has influenced the physicians’ choice of treatments among other therapeutic options and thus encouraging the procedural care approach (Petersen et al. 2006). Unlike for pay-for-performance, in approaches like fee-for-service, payments made to physicians are not linked to the services rendered, thereby raising concerns about undersupply of needed services. Pay-for-performance has made it easier for high value of services offered by the physicians (Petersen et al. 2006).
The pay-for-performance approach has a positive impact on quality and efficiency of health care. This payment mode will require that the physicians involved are paid according to the services rendered. Additionally, their pay will also be dictated by their performance as compared to preset quality objectives. It serves to correct other approaches like fee-for-performance where high volumes of services was offered without considering the value of service to the particular patient. In this approach, physicians become keener as they aim at good performance and thus making their services efficient and quality (Petersen et al. 2006).
This model has affected healthcare providers and their customers in various ways. Pay-for-performance has made some health care providers to have a narrow clinical focus (Hahn, 2006). This is attributed to the fact that pay-for-performance programs narrowly depends on set of quality measures designed for a given number of services as well as patient groups. For its incentives have been considered effective, so...