The unintended consequence of diabetes mellitus pay-for-performance (P4P) program in Taiwan: are patients with more comorbidities or more severe conditions likely to be excluded from the P4P program?
OBJECTIVE
Taiwan has instituted a pay-for-performance (P4P) program for diabetes mellitus (DM) patients that rewards doctors based in part on outcomes for their DM patients. Doctors are permitted to choose which of their DM patients are included in the P4P program. We test whether seriously ill DM patients are disproportionately excluded from the P4P program.


METHODS
This study utilizes data from the National Health Insurance (NHI) database in Taiwan for the period of January 2007 to December 2007. Our sample includes 146,481 DM-P4P patients (16.56 percent of the total) and 737,971 non-DM-P4P patients.


METHODS
We use logistic and multilevel models to estimate the effects of patient and hospital characteristics on P4P selection.


RESULTS
The results show that older patients and patients with more comorbidities or more severe conditions are prone to be excluded from P4P programs.


CONCLUSIONS
We found that DM patients are disproportionately excluded from P4P programs. Our results point to the importance of mandated participation and risk adjustment measures in P4P programs.
Chen
Tsung-Tai
TT
Department of Healthcare Information and Management, Ming Chuan University and Center for Health Insurance Research, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University.
Chung
Kuo-Piao
KP
Lin
I-Chin
IC
Lai
Mei-Shu
MS
D000368:Aged; D015897:Comorbidity; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus; D005260:Female; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012052:Reimbursement, Incentive / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013624:Taiwan