Contracts and Working Conditions in Medicine

Abstract

Contracts and working conditions are important influences on the medical workforce that must be carefully constructed and considered by policymakers. Contracts involve an enforceable agreement of the rights and responsibilities of both employer and employee. The principal–agent relationship and presence of asymmetric information in healthcare means that contracts must be incentive compatible and create sufficient incentive for doctors to act in the payer’s best interests. Within medicine, there are special characteristics that are believed to be particularly pertinent to doctors, who act as agents to both the patient and the payer. These include intrinsic motivation, professionalism, altruism, and multitasking, and they influence the success of these contracts. The three most popular methods of payment are fee-for-service, capitation, and salaries. In most contexts a blend of each of these three payment methods is used; however, guidance on the most appropriate blend is unclear and the evidence on the special nature of doctors is insubstantial. The role of skill mix and teamwork in a healthcare setting is an important consideration as it impacts the success of incentives and payment systems and the efficiency of workers. Additionally, with increasing demand for healthcare, changing skill mix is one response to problems with recruitment and retention in health services. Health systems in many settings depend on a large proportion of foreign-born workers and so migration is a key consideration in retention and recruitment of health workers. Finally, forms of external regulation such as accreditation, inspection, and revalidation are widely used in healthcare systems; however, robust evidence of their effectiveness is lacking.