According to Watson and Ovseiko (2005) incentives in the health care system have undergone a series of developments with the advances in the health care systems since 1940s when they were established, from a system of providing free services to patients to now when they pay for the services that they receive. In the recent past there has been a great concern on how well the health workers should be motivated so as to enable them to give quality health services and also attract many people to that profession.
Throughout their development the incentive schemes in the health care system have been influenced by a number of factors that have helped to determine the way forward for this issue. Such factors include environmental factors, economical factors and social cultural factors. As discussed in Jonas et al (2007) the environmental factors that have lead to the development of these incentives include the changing systems of governments that have the idea of motivating the health workers by providing them with the salaries and other additional allowances.
The governments have also contributed so much in putting controls to regulate the services, built good structures where they can work in and involving other governments to help them provide the services. On the other side there has been a hostile response in terms of the rules that are imposed to the establishment of such incentives that have limited them to a certain extent. The changing technology in the way that the health services should be provided has influenced the provision of the incentives so as to encourage people to embrace the new developments through research and build up of the knowledge base.
As summarized in Haynes (2008) such reforms in the way other professions in the way their activities are being run has influenced the incentives in the health sector also as a way to deal with the changes. Albert (2002) discusses the economic factors like inflation that has led to increased medical costs and cost of living in general this has made the issue to be addressed so as to enable health workers to meet the day to day costs. Since they were established there has been competition in the provision of health care services with so many organizations wanting to venture to that area.
This has meant that they have to get good workers who are well trained and the only ways to enable them do that was to use those incentives to attract and keep for long the employees. With the other professions also gaining much popularity and becoming attractive in terms of the incomes and salary they could promise the use of incentive was the way out to compete with such professions. There is also the issue of working on contract agreements which tends to direct the way both the employer and the employee will want to work.
The changing lifestyles of people also contributed to use of incentives because people did not want to start spending more of their time working, there are also instances of wanting to get more education qualifications in health care so that meant offering them support in meeting their expectations Jonas (2007). In addition to that the other social factors include the changes of beliefs and traditions towards modern medicine that has widened the market for health care creating a deficit of health workers who have been motivated by the incentives they are given to commit their time to work for the good health of the society.
Word count 582 References Daniel M. Albert (2002). A physician’s guide to health care management. Blackwell publishers. J . Watson, P . Ovseiko (2005). Health care systems: major themes in health and social welfare. Routledge publishers. Pamela L. Haynes (2008). Evaluating state Medicaid reforms. American institute for pubic policy research. S. Jonas, L. Raymond, K. Goldsteen (2007). An introduction to the U. S health care system. Springer publishing company.