Study: Screening Rates Linked to Financial Incentives

Rates of cervical cancer and diabetic retinopathy screenings were higher when physicians received financial incentives to conduct such tests and were lower when the rewards stopped, according to a study by British researchers, who looked at Kaiser Permanente physicians. Kaiser Permanente offered incentive payments for administering diabetic retinopathy tests from 1999 to 2003 and for cervical cancer screenings between 1999 and 2000 and from 2005 to present.

• "When Incentive Payments To Doctors End, Quality of Medical Care Declines" (Kaplan, "Booster Shots," Los Angeles Times, 5/11).