Does Pay-for-Performance Improve the Quality of Health Care?

TO THE EDITOR:

In their recent article, Petersen and colleagues (1) provide an excellent introduction to pay-for-performance initiatives with a special emphasis on determining the proof for its effectiveness in the literature.

I agree that more research needs to be done in this area, particularly in examining unintended negative outcomes of such a system. The authors propose an agenda for future research.

Two additional areas must be …