It pays to be healthier: Targeted financial incentives for patients can lead to health behavior change
Monday, November 21, 2011 - 12:32
in Health & Medicine
Financial incentives work for doctors. Could they work for patients, too? Could they encourage them to change unhealthy behaviors and use preventive health services more? In some cases, yes, according to Dr. Marita Lynagh from the University of Newcastle in Australia, and colleagues. Their work, looking at why financial incentives for patients could be a good thing to change risky health behaviors, indicates that incentives are likely to be particularly effective at altering 'simple' behaviors e.g. take-up of immunizations, primarily among socially disadvantaged groups. Their article is published online in Springer's International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.