Using Performance Incentives to Improve Medical Care Productivity and Health Outcomes
37 Pages Posted: 18 May 2013 Last revised: 17 Jul 2023
Date Written: May 2013
Abstract
We nested a large-scale field experiment into the national rollout of the introduction of performance pay for medical care providers in Rwanda to study the effect of incentives for health care providers. In order to identify the effect of incentives separately from higher compensation, we held constant compensation across treatment and comparison groups - a portion of the treatment group's compensation was based on performance whereas the compensation of the comparison group was fixed. The incentives led to a 20% increase in productivity, and significant improvements in child health. We also find evidence of a strong complementarity between performance incentives and baseline provider skill.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation