Abstract

[This article was originally published in HealthcarePapers, Volume 6, Number 4.]

The paper by Pink et al. is extraordinarily timely and useful for those managing the Ontario Wait Time Strategy. Pay-for-performance (PFP) has been a central tenet of this successful, publicly financed initiative, introduced 18 months ago. Governments around the world focus on wait time reduction, and this measurement is fashionably utilized as a popular indicator of how well a healthcare system is performing. Because wait time reduction is so high on the political agenda, governments are prepared to spend public money raising the question of how that money can be best spent to achieve that goal.