Term: Quality Based Incentive Funding (QBIF)
Last Updated: 2014-10-14
Quality Based Incentive Funding (QBIF) is an approach to physician compensation designed to reward quality processes in primary care. It is being trialed in Manitoba as part of the
Physician Integrated Network (PIN)
initiative. QBIF provides additional funding to clinics for meeting quality targets on selected clinical process indicators — in other words, pay for performance. The participating physicians continue to bill Manitoba Health for all services provided to their patients according to the same fee schedule used by other physicians (fee-for-service (FFS)). QBIF is provided to the clinic in addition to the usual physician funding mechanism. The clinic chooses how to use the QBIF to serve its patients best and to meet PIN objectives. For example, a clinic may hire non-medical staff to improve clinic access, or other health professionals such as nurses or dietitians to provide patient care.
The indicators included in the QBIF are determined by an indicator committee that includes representatives of the participating clinics and is measured at Manitoba Health using quarterly extracts from the clinic electronic medical records (EMRs). For a list of QBIF indicators, including definitions, please see
Appendix Table 1.2: Quality Based Incentive Funding (QBIF) Indicators
from Katz et al. (2014).