How to Pay Family Doctors: Why ‘Pay per Patient’ is Better than Fee for Service

Paying doctors for each patient in their care, rather than per-service-performed, would add value for money and increase access to physicians in primary care, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “How to Pay Family Doctors: Why ‘Pay per Patient’ is Better than Fee for Service,” authors Ake Blomqvist and Colin Busby make the case that primary care doctors should have incentives to promote efficiency in the system through the way they are paid. “Paying doctors per patient would give them greater incentive to keep patients healthy and add more patients to their rosters,” said Blomqvist, Health Policy Scholar at the C.D. Howe Institute.