Opinion: Paying for 'patient satisfaction' harms hospitals that care for poor people

All else equal, it would be wonderful if hospitals had an incentive to provide high-quality care. It does not seem fair to pay the same amount of money to a hospital that does a great job of caring for its pneumonia patients and one that does a lousy job. For the most part, however, third-party payers like insurance companies and Medicare pay hospitals for the volume of services they provide, or volume of patients they treat, not for the quality of the care they provide. Inattention to quality is coming to an end. Hospitals are increasingly being paid in part for their performance.