Doctor Incentives Don't Improve Care

Paying doctors financial rewards to meet targets for improving the care of patients made no discernible difference to the health or treatment of people with high blood pressure, a study has found.

The findings suggest governments and health insurers across the world may be wasting billions of dollars on doctor incentive schemes but getting no improvement in patient care, researchers who conducted the study said.

Researchers from Britain, the United States, and Canada assessed the impact of incentivized targets on quality of care and health outcomes in around 470,000 British patients with hypertension and found that they had no impact on rates of heart attacks, kidney failure, stroke, or death.

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