Shared savings show the most promise among financial incentives for promoting cost-effective integrated care, but implementation success varies by context.
The article “Financial Incentives for Integrated Care: A Scoping Review and Lessons for Evidence-Based Design,” published in the Health Policy Journal, addresses the challenges healthcare systems face in integrating care across providers, particularly for patients with chronic conditions. Despite restructuring efforts, many systems fail to achieve desired outcomes, often due to a lack of financial incentives. This scoping review identifies and assesses the effectiveness of four types of financial incentives—shared savings, bundled payments, pay for performance, and pay for coordination—based on 33 studies from the United States and the Netherlands published before December 2021.
The review highlights substantial variability in the cost-effectiveness of these incentives and underscores the importance of infrastructure, such as electronic medical records and communication channels, for successful implementation.
The findings suggest that while all four incentive types have potential, shared savings show the most promise for promoting cost-effective care integration. However, the limited evidence makes it difficult to draw definitive conclusions applicable across different contexts.