• Center on Health Equity & Access
  • Clinical
  • Health Care Cost
  • Health Care Delivery
  • Insurance
  • Policy
  • Technology
  • Value-Based Care

Paying, Not Penalizing, Patients to Stay Healthy

Article

A study published in the New England Journals of Medicine evaluated the ability of financial incentives in promoting smoking cessation.

A collaborative study between academic health policy centers and CVS Caremark, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, evaluated whether financial incentives among CVS Caremark employees and their families and friends would promote smoking cessation. The randomized trial assigned people to either individual incentive programs or group incentive programs in the form of direct rewards or refundable deposits; additionally, trial partcipants had access to information resources and were provided smoking cessation aids.

The trial found that reward-based programs were more successful in sustaining abstinence from smoking over the 6-month monitoring period, than were deposit-based programs. Also, group-based programs seemed to work better than the individual approach.

Read the paper in the current issue of NEJM: http://bit.ly/1FF2U1H

Related Videos
5 experts are featured in this series
3 experts are featured in this series.
3 experts are featured in this series.
1 expert is featured in this series.
Nihar Desai, MD, MPH
Dr Toon Van Gorp
Andrew Kuykendall, MD, Moffitt Cancer Center
Barry Byrne, MD
Giulio Cossu, MD
Dr Toon Van Gorp
Related Content
© 2025 MJH Life Sciences
AJMC®
All rights reserved.