title: When and how to use monetary incentives.
abstract: Will money motivate your staff to perform better? While some practice managers prefer not to use bonus incentive programs, others use them fequently and report excellent results. This article explores the benefits and pitfalls of using monetary incentives with your staff. It explores the effectiveness of bonuses compared with raises. It also considers the four qualities of effective incentive bonus programs and gives examples of both percentage bonus programs and flat-dollar bonus programs. In particular, this article includes how-to advice for structuring a new patient incentive bonus program along with the potential problems of such programs as reported by two doctors who tried them. Finally, the article explores the benefits of using merchandise rewards rather than cash and includes innovative ideas for maximizing bonuses by implementing a "cookie jar" system and dividing annual bonuses into two installments.
authors.affiliation: merlegerle@aol.com
authors.forename: Laura Sachs
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Hills
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation; D010816:Physician Incentive Plans / Q000191:economics* / Q000458:organization & administration; D020399:Practice Management / Q000191:economics*