TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mullen,Kathleen J.
AU  - Frank,Richard G.
AU  - Rosenthal,Meredith B.
TI  - Can You Get What You Pay For?  Pay-For-Performance and the Quality of Healthcare Providers
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14886
PY  - 2009
Y2  - April 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14886
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14886.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Kathleen Mullen
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
P.O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138
E-Mail: kmullen@rand.org

Richard Frank
Department of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School
180 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617/432-0178
Fax: 617/432-1219
E-Mail: frank@hcp.med.harvard.edu

Meredith Rosenthal
Department of Health Policy and Management
Harvard School of Public Health
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617/432-3418
E-Mail: mrosenth@hsph.harvard.edu
AB  - Despite the popularity of pay-for-performance (P4P) among health policymakers and private insurers as a tool for improving quality of care, there is little empirical basis for its effectiveness. We use data from published performance reports of physician medical groups contracting with a large network HMO to compare clinical quality before and after the implementation of P4P, relative to a control group. We consider the effect of P4P on both rewarded and unrewarded dimensions of quality. In the end, we fail to find evidence that a large P4P initiative either resulted in major improvement in quality or notable disruption in care.
ER  -