ABSTRACT
To understand how a health care provider can be encouraged to change its behaviour and improve its performance, it is necessary to understand its behaviour, that is, to analyse the determinants of the provider performance. In the face of a complex reality a single indicator or even a limited set of indicators will not make it possible to account for the results of a health care provider. Every performance incentive scheme will need to use tools to assess the performance of a health care provider. In general, there is quite some confusion surrounding performance indicators. In principle, the appropriateness of the types of indicators is related to the performance framework. In performance incentive mechanisms, we need to consider another characteristic of indicators, namely the difference between quantity and quality indicators. The performance incentive mechanism is implemented within a particular institutional context.
