Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls

Publication Info

Publication Type

• Books

Initiative

• Global Health Policy Research Network

Research Topics

• Global Health Policy

CGD Expert

• Ruth Levine

Articles

• Performance Incentives: Q&A with Rena Eichler and Ruth Levine
• U.S. Global Health Corps is a Win-Win Proposition: Q&A with Mead Over
• Making Health Pay: Performance-Based Incentives
• Global Health Forecasting - Q&A with Ruth Levine
• Following the Money in Global Health
• Ideas to Action: CGD and Global Health

Event

• Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls

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Rena Eichler, Ruth Levine, and the Performance-Based Incentives Working Group

06/15/2009

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Over the last decade, donors have poured billions of dollars into health programs in developing countries. But despite some important successes, many low-income countries are still falling short, particularly in areas that require a functioning health system. In Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls, Rena Eichler, Ruth Levine, and members of the Working Group on Performance-Based Incentives explore a new approach to health funding—the transfer of money or goods to patients or providers when they take health-related actions or achieve performance targets. Donors have traditionally paid for inputs—doctors’ salaries, medical equipment—in the hope that they would lead to better health. Performance incentives turn the equation on its head. They start with the result—more children immunized, for example—and let health workers and managers on the ground decide how to achieve them.

Performance Incentives for Global Health documents a host of experiences with incentives for maternal and child health care, tuberculosis, child nutrition, HIV/AIDS, chronic conditions and more. An accompanying short video (below) illustrates the use of performance incentives in Rwanda and Haiti and shares the perspectives of patients and health care workers. The evidence strongly suggests that incentives can improve health and strengthen health systems in a variety of settings.

As decision makers in developing countries and their donor partners look for practical ways to improve health-sector performance, real-world experiences show that they should look to performance incentives to complement increasing total spending on health.

Contents

1. Front Matter
3. Part I: More Health for the Money
   Rena Eichler and Ruth Levine
4. • Ch. 1: Money into Health
   • Ch. 2: Problems to Solve
   • Ch. 3: Using Performance Incentives
   • Ch. 4: Making Payment for Performance Work
   • Ch. 5: A Learning Agenda
6. Part II: Case Studies
7. • Ch. 6: Latin America: Cash Transfers to Support Better Household Decisions
     Amanda Glassman, Jessica Todd, and Marie Gaarder
   • Ch. 7: United States: Orienting Pay-for-Performance to Patients
     Kevin Volpp and Mark Pauly
   • Ch. 8: Afghanistan: Paying NGOs for Performance in a Postconflict Setting
     Egbert Sondorp, Natasha Palmer, Lesley Strong, and Abdul Wali
   • Ch. 9: Haiti: Going to Scale with a Performance Incentive Model
     Rena Eichler, Paul Auxila, Uder Antoine, and Bernateau Desmangles
   • Ch. 10: Rwanda: Performance-Based Financing in the Public Sector
     Louis Rusa, Miriam Schneidman, Gyuri Fritsche, and Laurent Musango
   • Ch. 11: Nicaragua: Combining Demand- and Supply-Side Incentives
     Ferdinando Regalía and Leslie Castro
   • Ch. 12: Worldwide: Incentives for Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment
     Alexandra Beith, Rena Eichler, and Diana Weil
9. Index

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