Instrumentality in health care: a response to Adam Oliver

In his paper, 'Incentivizing improvements in health care delivery', Adam Oliver discusses recent efforts to manage the performance of health care workers in the United States and United Kingdom. Overall, the results of performance management seem to be mixed, but Oliver's discussion hints at a more fundamental question about this approach, specifically: what are the limits of a focused instrumentality in a context as rich, fluid and collaborative as the delivery of health care? Might performance management schemes actually frustrate the efforts of conscientious health care workers? Indicators make few allowances for the heterogeneity of treatment effects or patient values or preferences. Health care workers may also face pressure to appear to satisfy indicators that are actually impossible to satisfy.