Billion-dollar hospital bonuses not see improving health

As part of a broad effort to improve the quality of patient experience, the federal government is offering a billion dollars in incentives to those hospitals that rank highest in patient satisfaction. And while this has resulted in a number of efforts to improve quality of care, such as hospital CEOs acting as "secret shoppers" and nurses popping in hourly to check in on patients, critics contend that incentives like this won't really improve care. All it will do is incentivize hospitals to not treat patients such as the elderly and the mentally, who are predisposed to dislike their service. What's more, these same critics—who, admittedly, include a major hospital lobbying group—note that incentivizing good service doesn't seem to actually produce better service.