Long-Run Effects of Temporary Incentives on Medical Care Productivity
The adoption of new clinical practice patterns by medical care providers is often challenging, even when the patterns are believed to be efficacious and profitable. This paper uses a randomized field experiment to examine the effects of temporary f...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/06/24736285/long-run-effects-temporary-incentives-medical-care-productivity http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22228 |
| Summary: | The adoption of new clinical practice
patterns by medical care providers is often challenging,
even when the patterns are believed to be efficacious and
profitable. This paper uses a randomized field experiment to
examine the effects of temporary financial incentives paid
to medical care clinics for the initiation of prenatal care
in the first trimester of pregnancy. The rate of early
initiation of prenatal care was 34 percent higher in the
treatment group than in the control group while the
incentives were being paid, and this effect persisted at
least 15 months and likely 24 months or more after the
incentives ended. These results are consistent with a model
where the incentives enable providers to address the fixed
costs of overcoming organizational inertia in innovation,
and suggest that temporary incentives may be effective at
motivating improvements in long-run provider performance at
a substantially lower cost than permanent incentives. |
|---|