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Or...do something along the lines of what the healthcare world has already come up with: doctors get paid for the quality of care they give, rather than just quantity.

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This is exactly what I was waiting to see at the bottom of the article. It's what Medicare is trying to move towards in the US - doctors are paid more if their patients are healthy (as measured by biomarkers, time in hospital, etc.)

Right. And many insurance companies already reward hospitals and doctors more if the diagnosis methods and treatments were appropriately effective. For example, if the patient with pneumonia is discharged but re-admitted a week later for recurrence of the pneumonia because they weren't given the appropriate antibiotic, or their bed during hospital stay wasn't at a 30-degree angle, etc...then they get less money from insurance.

Or if a particular emergency department physicians keep ordering unnecessary and expensive diagnostic tests, not only may those tests not be reimbursed, but their "score" for quality of care goes down, and so will their personal reimbursement.

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