Pay for Performance (P4P) in healthcare is an emerging international trend that started in the mid-1980s in the United States and branched to other countries including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Taiwan, and England.
The largest international example is in England, where the National Health Services (NHS) launched the General Medical Services Contract - Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) in 2004. This program provides primary care physicians with an increase in income of up to 25% if thresholds for various quality indicators are met.
Another notable example is Australia, where the government's Medicare Practice Incentives Program targets the quality of care delivered by general practice physicians. In a related performance measurement effort, several countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have developed healthcare quality indicators for purposes of assessing international healthcare quality (healthcare quality indicators project).
“The major achievement is bringing large health plans, medical groups, NCQA and PBGH together to produce a statewide state-of-art quality report card based on best of class features.”
Michael Belman, MD, MPH, FACP, Anthem
