Quality based social insurance coverage and payment of the application of a high cost medical therapy: the case of spinal cord stimulation for chronic non-oncologic pain in The Netherlands.

This article describes a project in which a national continuous quality improvement system and a payment scheme were explicitly linked, while introducing an expensive treatment (Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS)) in the social health insurance benefit package, in The Netherlands. By linking a national CQI system and a payment scheme in a conditional financing policy a steering instrument for future control of the quality of neuromodulation treatment through SCS is created.