Researchers from ARC West Midlands, in collaboration with ARC East Midlands, have recently published a paper on examining organisational responses to performance-based financial incentive systems, using NHS staff influenza vaccination rates (2012/13-2019/20) as a case study.

The paper, published in BMJ Quality and Safety, found that in the years prior to a national performance-based incentive being set, around 9-31% of NHS Trusts achieved their target of influenza vaccination uptake among their staff. In the four years after the incentive this increased to 43-74%. Threshold effects did not emerge before the national incentive was set, but since then threshold effects appeared in each year. Policymakers who set such incentives should be encouraged to track these threshold effects as they will contain information on how organisations respond to an incentive, as well as how the incentive may be improved and any unintended effects it may have.

You can read the full paper and find out more at: https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/early/2021/09/27/bmjqs-2021-013671.