Observations on Incentives to Improve Population Health
Metrics in population health can serve to draw and focus attention, encourage action, and direct rewards and penalties. When those rewards and penalties take on an economic dimension, the results can be powerful. The potential application of population health measures is especially important if the aim is to transform the allocation of social energy and resources, as it clearly must be. Currently, our national health investment profile is deeply flawed — more than 95% of every health dollar goes to treatment rather than prevention. In a system in which all our salient incentives are structured to reward volume over value, we miss virtually no opportunity to treat disease, often unsuccessfully or erroneously. (Preventing Chronic Disease: September 2010)