The Health Affairs Blog has a wonderful post – Will Pay For Performance Backfire? Insights From Behavioral Economics

This blog post describes the behavioral economics about P4P.  The co-author, Dan Ariely, is a well known professor of psychology and behavioral economics.  In the post, he and his co-authors provide the research basis that argues against any benefit from P4P.

As I have blogged repeatedly, we have no evidence that P4P improves care, while we do have evidence that P4P can harm.

We must always understand that P4P is an intervention.  It has the properties of any other intervention.  Many of the same people who want to restrict pharmaceutical use and device use until we have solid evidence still support P4P.  Why do they not demand the same evidence of improvement and lack of harm from this intervention?

P4P is no different.  Please read the article.  It expands on the ideas that Daniel Pink has include in his book Drive.