Performance management: the clinician's tale

The success of performance management in health care depends crucially on the response of health care professionals to the various instruments of performance management (PM). Yet we know little about how those professionals think and work. They may ignore PM for three reasons: ignorance of the relevant performance information; lack of faith in the credibility of the information; or inability to take relevant action. Furthermore, there is a risk that PM comes into fundamental conflict with the idea of professional autonomy and personalization of care. In order to create more effective PM policies, we need to know much more about professional motivations and constraints.