Incentives to follow Best Practice in Health Care

There has been long-standing interest in the use of incentives to encourage delivery of high-quality health care services at the lowest feasible cost. There has been long-standing interest in the use of incentives to encourage delivery of high-quality health care services at the lowest feasible cost. Although it is clear that health care professionals have intrinsic incentives to deliver high-quality care to patients, there are significant variations in quality standards achieved in practice, indicating that a desire to see patients thrive is on its own insufficient to ensure uniformly high standards of care. It is important that the health system provides incentives to add to intrinsic motivation. OHE has published a Briefing by Karlsberg Schaffer, Sussex and Feng summarising the evidence on incentives that encourage providers of health care to follow guidance on best practice, particularly where that guidance requires the use of specific medicines or other health technologies. These incentives include monetary and non-monetary rewards.