Rewarding for quality: new incentives emerge to improve healthcare and promote best practices.

When the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Quality of Health Care in America released its second report, Crossing the Quality Chasm, last year, criticism was leveled at the "toxic reimbursement system" that failed to reward efforts to achieve quality care. However, times are changing, and this issue of The Quality Letter looks at new ways incentive programs are being implemented and fine-tuned at the hospital, health plan, and medical practice level to promote the delivery of quality healthcare.