Incentive mechanism for sharing and using EHR in medical consortiums based on performance evaluation

BackgroundThe construction of medical consortiums not only promotes active cooperation among hospitals, but also further intensifies active competition among them. The shared use of electronic health records (EHR) breaks the original pattern of benefit distribution among hospitals.ObjectiveThe purpose of this paper is to establish an incentive mechanism for the shared use EHR, and to reveal the incentive effect and mechanism of key factors, and to put forward management suggestions for solving the real conflicts.MethodsWe constructed a basic incentive model and an incentive model that introduces performance evaluation as a supervisory signal, based on analyzing the hospital cost function, the hospital benefit function, and the incentive contract function. Finally, the incentive effects of key factors before and after the introduction of performance evaluation were verified and compared using MATLAB simulation method.ResultsThe profit level and incentive coefficient of hospitals sharing EHR are independent of the amount of one-time government subsidies. Regardless of whether a performance evaluation supervisory signal is introduced or not, the incentive coefficients are increasing functions with respect to rho, tau, but decreasing functions with respect to beta, delta, gamma. After the inclusion of supervisory signal of performance evaluation in the model, the ability of hospitals to use EHR has a higher impact effectiveness on improving both incentive effects and benefit levels. The impact of the value-added coefficient on the level of earnings is consistently greater than it would have been without the inclusion of the performance evaluation supervisory signal.ConclusionsEnhancing the capacity of hospitals to use EHR and tapping and expanding the value-added space of EHR are 2 key paths to promote sustainable shared use of EHR. Substantive performance evaluation plays an important role in stabilizing incentive effects.