The health care domain is undergoing a sweeping shift from a model of paternalism towards increased patient-centered care. Vendors offering patient-centered health IT use incentive mechanisms to motivate the continued use of health IT. However, incentive mechanisms may not always be beneficial to patientcentered care and may lack focus on actual treatment processes. Therefore, we focus on the research question: What incentive mechanisms are or are not useful for promoting use of patient-centered health IT and why? We assess and rank 28 incentive mechanisms by utility for patient-centered health IT. Findings reveal that reminders and interface improvements are most beneficial and that social comparison and social facilitation mechanisms are most detrimental to patientcentered care. This work extends the scientific knowledge base on patient-centered health IT, establishes a foundation for future research on patient-centered incentive mechanisms, and provides practical audiences with insights on how to effectively design patient-centered health IT.

Abstract