Tag: Incentives

Eight Bright New Ideas From Behavioral Economists That Could Help You Get Healthy.

Dec 4, 2013• 5

By Deborah Bae

Through a series of small grants, we’re is exploring the utility of applying behavioral economic principles to perplexing health and health care problems—everything from getting seniors to walk more to forgoing low-value health care.

At a recent meeting in Philadelphia we challenged grantees to compete in an Innovation Tournament. The goal was to identify testable ideas that leverage behavioral economic principles to help make people healthier by working with commercial entities. Participants were assigned to groups and made their best pitches to their colleagues. And of course we used a behavioral economics principle (financial incentives) to increase participation: Each member of the first, second and third place teams received Amazon gift cards.

Eight teams made the finals:

1. Love Lock: This team addressed the issue of driving and texting by proposing an app that could be installed on your cell phone that would send reminders not to text while driving. This team would work with car insurance and mobile phone carrier companies and provide discounts to those who get it installed. The behavioral economics principles being tested are default choice and opt-out.

2. McQuick & Fit: Too many people eat unhealthy food. This team’s idea was to have a rewards card that can only be used to purchase healthy food. With each purchase, the customer would earn points toward free, healthy foods. Online orders would be placed through a website that would feature salient labeling and allow for defaults to order healthy meals. The behavioral economics principles at play include pre-commitment, default choice, labeling, and incentives.

3. Just Bring Me Water: The problem tackled by this team is “regrettable” calories—mindlessly consuming whatever is put in front of you, such as free bread at a restaurant, or soda on a plane. The innovation: when booking a table online or calling for a reservation, you could ask to “opt-out” of the complimentary bread or chips that are offered. This would reduce the consumption of regrettable calories.

4. Lunch Club: This group looked at addressing gluttony through a partnership with a chain restaurant. When going out for a meal, portions are typically bigger and diners consume more. But what if you had the option of doggy-bagging one third of the meal for another meal—framed as “buy dinner and get lunch free”? And, if you took this option, you would get a scratch off as an enhanced incentive and immediate reward. The behavioral economic principles being tested here include loss aversion, active choice, and incentives.

5. Snooze, But Don’t Lose: People don’t get enough good sleep, which leads to poor executive functioning and safety issues. To increase safety, productivity, and efficiency, this group proposed using a Fitbit to build in reminders to go to bed earlier and provide feedback on good sleep. The behavioral economic principles at play are pre-commitment and loss aversion.

Australia’s Prisoners’ Dilemma: Incentives Matter in Health Care

Oct 10, 2013• 4

By Chris Denoia

The shortcomings of the Fee For Service (FFS) model are widely known.

During the 1800s, the British empire shipped prisoners to newly formed penal colonies in Australia (technically, these were British prisoners, but that doesn’t make a catchy title). Ship captains were compensated for each prisoner who boarded the ship. The financial incentive ruled over decency, each captain stuffed as many prisoners on to the ship as it could handle. Of course, the prisoner survival rate lingered at a precarious 50%, while those who managed to survive the journey often arrived beaten, sick or starving.

Attempts were made to improve the survival rates, through what might be considered early wellness programs. Captains were mandated to bring citrus to combat scurvy, a 19th century wellness program. Doctors were required on each ship carrying prisoners, improved access ala concierge medicine. I’m sure someone may have proposed it’s the prisoners responsibility to survive the trip and they ought to engage in their own survival. Nevertheless, requiring lemons and limes and placing physicians on the ships proved equally ineffective.

In 1862, economist Edwin Chadwick suggested a change to the incentive structure. Ship captains were no longer compensated for each prisoner who boarded in England, but, instead, received payment for every living prisoner who got off the ship in Australia. The first pay for outcomes program in healthcare. The survival rate on ensuing trips jumped from 50% to 98%.

The moral of the story is that incentives matter.

Primary care physicians are the ship captains of the 21st century.
American patients are prisoners of the US healthcare system.
Misaligned incentives are the root cause for what ails the system.

Christopher DeNoia is the Vice President of Business Development at Amplify Health, where this post originally appeared.

Enabling the Health Care Locavore

Aug 11, 2013• 32

By Adrian Gropper, MD

Three juicy lemons came through my inbox this week. The NY Times published an expose of why hip replacement surgery costs 5-10 times as much in the US as in Belgium even though it’s the same implant. JAMA published research and a superb editorial on the Views of US Physicians About Controlling Health Care Costs and CMS put out a request for public comment on whether physicians’ Medicare pay should be made public. Bear with me while I try to make lemonade, locally, from these three sour economic perspectives.

Here’s a super-concentrated summary of the three articles: The hip surgery is more expensive because, in the US, as many as 10 intermediaries mark-up the price of that same hip prosthesis. Then, Tilburt et al said in JAMA that “physicians report that almost everyone but physicians bears responsibility for controlling health care costs.” The physicians reported that lawyers (60%), insurance companies (59%), drug and device manufacturers (56%), even hospitals (56%) and patients (52%) bear a major responsibility to control health care costs. Finally, CMS is trying to balance the privacy interests of physicians with the market failure that my other two lemons illustrate.

Can we apply local movement principles to health reform? How much of our money can we keep with our neighbors? What policies and technologies would enable the health care locavore? The locavore health system couldn’t possibly be more expensive than what we have now and, as with food and crafts, more of the money we spend would benefit our neighbors and improve our community.

How Misplaced Reimbursement Incentives Drive Healthcare Costs Up

Jun 21, 2013• 7

By David Mokotoff, MD

For all of those out there anticipating the 2014 official role out of Obamacare, also known as the ACA (Affordable Care Act), here is a cautionary tale.

Many years ago, as I was growing my cardiology practice, it became evident that diagnostic services for my specialty, like stress tests, echocardiograms, etc., were done less efficiently and cost more at the local hospital, then in the office. This stimulated many groups in the 1980s and 90s to install their own “ancillary” diagnostic services. Patients loved not having to deal with the long waits and higher copay prices at the hospitals. And yes, the cardiologists did increase their revenues with these tests. However, lower costs to patients, insurance companies, Medicare, and improved patient satisfaction were just as powerful a stimulus to the explosive growth of these diagnostic tests, and later even cardiac catheterization labs, when integrated into the physicians’ offices.

As the growth in testing spiraled upward, the hospital industry saw their slice of the outpatient revenue pie nosedive. Hospital lobbyists and policy-makers cried foul and complained of greed and self-referral, which they said was spiking the rapid rise in healthcare costs.

Studies laying blame on self-referrals being the major culprit for escalating healthcare costs, have been inconclusive. However, after years of lobbying and the passage of ACA, the hospital industry finally had the weight of the Federal government on their side. It did not take long for Medicare to start dialing back the reimbursements for in-office ancillary tests and procedures, and outpatient cardiac catheterization labs were one of their main targets. Hospitals had lost millions of dollars to the burgeoning growth of these labs inside the cardiologist’s office.

Our twelve-man group had a safe and successful lab for about ten years. Then after the ACA was passed, Medicare began to cut the reimbursements for global and technical fees in this area. The cuts were so Draconian that it became impossible financially to continue the service. Never mind that we could provide the same service as the hospital more efficiently, with better patient satisfaction, and at a third of the cost.

Why Surgical Complications May Actually Hurt Profits Despite What You’ve Just Read

Apr 17, 2013• 4

By Eli Perencevich, MD

There’s a high-profile and important paper in JAMA this week by Sunil Eappen and colleagues. The study looked at surgical discharges during 2010 from a single 12-hospital system and came to the conclusion that admissions that include a surgical complication were associated with a higher profit (defined as the contribution margin) than admissions without complications. The authors conclude that this creates a disincentive for hospitals preventing surgical complications since they might see reduced profits as a result. This is a very provocative finding and it’s getting a lot of well-placed media attention, as you might expect. There is an important caveat with the study that I would like to highlight.

In the study, the authors report that admissions with surgical complications result in $39,000 higher “profits” if the care is reimbursed via a private payer and $1800 if Medicare is the payer. However, as Dr. Reinhardt correctly noted in the editorial,

“Allocating profit and loss is exquisitely sensitive to the many assumptions made in economic modeling and must be performed carefully to provide useful evidence about the financial ramifications of surgical complications and other services.“

His concern dealt mostly with how the authors allocated fixed costs in their calculations. My concern has to do with what the authors assumed happens to an empty bed once a patient is discharged in a US hospital.

Building a Better Health Care System: The Incentive Cure

Apr 15, 2013

By Francois de Brantes

Every day, millions of health care workers wake up and get ready to offer one of the noblest of services – to try and heal and bring comfort to the sick. They do valiant work, day in and day out, even as they confront extrinsic incentives that chip away at their mission and souls.

What are “extrinsic incentives?”

Consider this scenario. You’re driving a year-old car, and the engine light pops on. The car is under full warranty, so you bring it into the dealer. The problem is fixed quickly at no charge. This simple interaction between the buyer and provider of a service illustrates the broader and essential role of extrinsic (external) and intrinsic (internal) incentives.

Intrinsically, most of us want to do the right thing for ourselves, personally and professionally. You want to maintain the car well, so it retains its value and gets you safely from one place to another. The dealer wants to do the best possible job to keep you happy, so you’ll buy from him again. If the car is serviced well and doesn’t need extra repairs, he does well and so do you.

What the US Can Learn From China’s Health Care Reform

Mar 18, 2013• 10

By Leana Wen, MD

Wang Li is a 48-year-old farmer from Dalian, China. After a two-day trip to the major provincial hospital, he’s heading home to his village to die. Wang has lung cancer, and even with insurance, his surgery will cost him 20,000 RMB — $3,000, which is twice his annual salary. The surgery would be curative, but it doesn’t matter. “I cannot burden my family,” he said.

I am a Chinese-born, American physician who just returned from a two-month research trip spanning twelve cities and nine provinces in China, where many of the health care reforms in contention in the U.S. have already been tried. As Americans contemplate the decisions ahead, consider China’s cautionary tale.

Today’s China is one of great disparity. The wealthy minority receives top-notch care, while the poor majority suffers from little access to care and no way to pay for it. Stories abound of patients like Wang Li who sign out of hospitals when they run out of savings, knowing they will die without treatment.

The Promises and Pitfalls of Pay for Performance

Mar 3, 2013• 4

By Martin S. Gaynor

There’s been a great deal of discussion about health care payment reform. Prominent in this discussion is “Pay for Performance” (P4P). The idea is simple — rather than pay providers based on volume of care (fee-for-service) or number of patients (capitation), tie their payment to a measure(s) of performance. There has been substantial concern about the quality of care delivered to patients, so pay for performance appears to make a lot of sense. Don’t we want to reward providers for good performance? Shouldn’t this encourage them to provide high quality care?

Unfortunately, this is not as straightforward as it might appear. While the idea of pay for performance is very appealing and intuitive, there are some major pitfalls in implementation.

How Much are Misaligned Incentives in Health Care Costing Tax Payers?

Feb 23, 2013• 28

By Elizabeth Dzeng, MD

On Christmas Eve, I took care of a patient who had just undergone surgery for an infected artificial shoulder. He was to be discharged on intravenous antibiotics three times a day for six weeks. This is a pretty common treatment. Patients are generally able to give themselves this medication with the help of a home care nurse who visits once a week. The total cost of this is approximately $7000 for nursing visits, antibiotics and supplies ($120 per visit for eight nursing visits plus $143 per day for antibiotics)

The social worker informed him that Medicare would not pay for home care nurse visits or supplies. BUT, Medicare pays for inpatient rehabilitation, which he would be eligible for to receive these antibiotics. Given the choice of paying $7000 for home administration versus $0 for inpatient rehabilitation, naturally he chose inpatient rehabilitation.

The problem is, is that his inpatient stay costs taxpayers approximately $21,000. $350 for room and board plus additional costs for antibiotics and supplies, totaling approximately $500 a day. Furthermore, although he was well enough to be discharged home before Christmas, he needed to stay until he could be placed in rehab. Because of holiday scheduling, most rehabilitation facilities were not accepting admissions. Thus, he had to stay in the hospital an extra four days in the hospital over the weekend and holidays. Given that the average cost of a hospital stay is $2338 in Maryland that added an additional $9352 or so of unnecessary expenses.

In sum, because financial incentives encouraged my patient to spend $0 rather than $7000 out of pocket, Medicare spent an unnecessary added $30,000 on his hospitalization and care.

Engaged Patients Translate to Better Outcomes and Costs

Feb 10, 2013• 10

By JUDITH HIBBARD and JESSICA GREENE

The expansion of health insurance coverage may be the most visible aspect of health reform, but other elements will ultimately have a significant impact on how we all experience health care. One pivotal change is how health care organizations are paid. New payment approaches will reward providers based on whether services actually improve patients’ health and keep costs down versus simply incentivizing them to provide more care.

One of the more consequential changes will be a greater focus on helping patients to be more involved in their care. There is ample evidence that the behaviors people engage in and the health care choices they make have a very clear effect on both health and costs, positively and negatively. The most innovative health care delivery systems recognize this and see their patients as assets who can help them achieve the goals of better health at lower costs. From this point of view, “investing” in patients and helping them to be more effective partners in care makes good sense.

Our study, reported in the February issue of Health Affairs, highlights this role that patients play in determining health-related outcomes. We found that patients who were more knowledgeable, skilled and confident about managing their day-to-day health and health care (also known as “patient activation,” measured by the Patient Activation Measure) had health care costs that were 8 percent lower in the base year and 21 percent lower in the next year compared to patients who lacked this type of confidence and skill. These savings held true even after adjusting for patient differences, such as demographic factors and the severity of illnesses.

Even among patients with the same chronic illness, those who were more “activated” had lower overall health care costs than patients who were less so. Among asthma patients, the least activated patients had costs that were 21 percent higher than the most activated patients. With high blood pressure, the cost differential was 14 percent.