NY ties docs' income to quality of care

In a bold experiment in performance pay, complaints from patients at New York City's public hospitals and other measures of their care—like how long before they are discharged and how they fare afterward—will be reflected in doctors' paychecks under a plan being negotiated by the physicians and their hospitals. The proposal represents a broad national push away from the traditional model of rewarding doctors for the volume of services they order, a system that has been criticized for promoting unnecessary treatment.