Physician financial incentives: use of quality incentives inches up, but productivity still dominates.

The proportion of physicians in group practice whose compensation is based in part on quality measures increased from 17.6 percent in 2000-01 to 20.2 percent in 2004-05, according to a new national study from the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Despite this small but statistically significant increase, quality-related physician compensation is much less common than financial incentives tied to physicians' individual productivity, which has consistently affected 70 percent of physicians in non-solo practice since 1996-97. Examining the trend in quality-related physician compensation since 1996-97 suggests that quality incentives are most prevalent among primary care physicians and in large practices that receive a substantial share of revenue from capitated payments, or fixed per patient, per month payments.