Early Experience with Pay-for-Performance: From Concept to Practice

October 12, 2005 Early Experience with Pay-for-Performance: From Concept to Practice Growing optimism over the promise of "pay for performance" to improve the quality of health care may have been given further impetus following publication of the first study to assess the effects of quality incentives in a large health plan. With support from The Commonwealth Fund, researchers examining a pay-for-performance program implemented by PacifiCare Health Systems -- one of the nation's largest health plans -- found that for one of three clinical quality measures studied, a physician network that was offered bonus payments outperformed another network . . .