10 February 2007

As a last resort, try incentives

From Manchester Online:

Hospitals are to be given cash bonuses - for keeping people alive. Regional health bosses are planning to try out a US system of rewarding trusts [that] have low death rates, levels of infection and readmissions.
I haven’t seen the details. It could be a step in the right direction; or, depending on the targets chosen, it could worsen matters, as has happened with the Mickey Mouse micro-targets used throughout the UK’s National Health Service. (See this blog, passim.) Expect opposition to any meaningful reform from the British trade unions.

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