Featured Review: Paying for performance to improve the delivery of healthcare services in low- and middle-income countries

Arecently published review from Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Group looks at  the effects of ‘pay for performance’ strategies on the delivery of healthcare services in low- and middle-income countries.Karin Diaconu, first author of this review, notes, " There is growing interest in paying for performance as a strategy for aligning the work of health providers and healthcare organizations with public health goals. The volume of schemes implementing paying for performance has increased over the last decade and so has the number of studies on the effectiveness of these strategies in low- and middle-income countries.This review brings this evidence together and asks how successful schemes are in improving health care and health. The review notes that paying for performance may have some positive effects: it may lead to increased uptake of some health services, better quality of care, and improve the availability of resources as well as improving autonomy of involved healthcare organisations. "Key messagesPay for performance strategies may have both positive and negative effects on the health services they target. These strategies may also have positive effects on other health services that are not directly targeted and may have no unintended negative effects on these services. However, most of this evidence is of low certainty and we need more, well-conducted studies on this topic.  What is ‘pay for performance’?In a ' pay for performance '...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news