Assessment and recommendations

Most often, health care providers are paid in the same way they always have been, using the traditional, dominant payment methods common across OECD health systems. Yet, these ways of paying providers – through fee-for-service (FFS), capitation, salary, global budget or more recently diagnosis-related groups (DRG) – are often poorly aligned with contemporary health system priorities. Rather than giving incentives to providers to improve quality, or deliver care more efficiently, “traditional” payment methods come with built-in incentives leading to undesirable behaviours, for instance over-provision of services or inattention to clinical need.