Incentivizing primary care physicians: Opportunities and challenges

Abstract

As the healthcare market attempts to move from “volume to value” in regard to compensation, there are a number of issues that must be addressed in terms of how clinicians respond to various types of incentives. This chapter describes some of the challenges that exist in trying to put forward incentive programs for primary care physicians. We begin by questioning whether and how primary care physicians respond to financial incentives. The fact that value is a complex metric in relation to the care of frail older adults is discussed in the context of the geriatric approach to care. This is reviewed in the setting of CMS’s described “quadruple aim” as well as in conjunction with the focus on person-centered care.