Disclosing doctors' incentives: will consumers understand and value the information?

As part of a broader movement toward accountability in health care, federal and state governments have required health plans to disclose physicians' financial incentives. Available data suggest that patients have poor comprehension of the incentives and significant barriers to learning, including high trust in their physicians, reluctance to think of the physician/patient relationship in financial terms, and failure to understand the relevance of the information to their health care choices and treatment. Disclosure that conveys clearly what is at stake will increase the salience of incentive information but is also more likely to erode trust.