The Leading Business Education Network for Doctors, Financial Advisors and Health Industry Consultants

DEFINITION

By Staff Reporters

SPONSOR: http://www.MarcinkoAssociates.com

***

***

Incentives: It is broadly accepted that incenting someone to do something is effective, whether it be paying office staff a commissions to sell more healthcare products, or giving bonuses to office employees if they work efficiently to see more HMO patients.  Some experts even suggest there are five specific components1 that should be built into an overall physician incentive program:

• Appropriate financial incentives.
• Managed-care efficiency incentives.
• Group citizenship.
• Patient satisfaction.
• Group profitability.

What is not well understood is that the incentives cause a sub-conscious distortion of decision-making ability in the incented person.  This distortion causes the affected person – whether it is yourself or someone else – to truly believe in a certain decision, even if it is the wrong choice when viewed objectively.  Service professionals, including financial advisors and lawyers, are affected by this bias, and it causes them to honestly offer recommendations that may be inappropriate, and that they would recognize as being inappropriate if they did not have this bias. 

According to colleague Dan Ariely PhD, the existence of this bias makes it important for each one of us to examine our incentive biases and take extra care when advising physician clients, or to make sure we are appropriately considering non-incented alternatives.

COMMENTS APPRECIATED

Subscribe and Refer Today!

***

***

Filed under: "Doctors Only", Accounting, Drugs and Pharma, Ethics, Funding Basics, Health Economics, Health Insurance, Health Law & Policy, Healthcare Finance, Managed Care, Marcinko Associates | Tagged: Dan Ariely PhD, doctor incentives, HMO, incentives, incentives in medicine, Managed Care, Marcinko, mental health, patients, physician incentives, politics, PPO, psychology, recovery, society | Leave a comment »