ACP provides ethical guidance on using incentives to promote personal responsibility

A new ACP position paper provides ethical guidance for the use of incentives to promote personal responsibility for health.

In "Ethical Considerations for the Use of Patient Incentives to Promote Personal Responsibility for Health: West Virginia Medicaid and Beyond," authors stress the importance of such programs in a comprehensive strategy promoting well-being and prevention using evidence-based practice, and discourage discriminatory programs that may punish patients for unhealthy behaviors.

The paper's release underlines provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which includes state grant funding to develop initiatives providing incentives to Medicaid beneficiaries for prevention of chronic diseases. ACP used the West Virginia Medicaid program as a reference point because the program is one of the first of its kind to use such incentives.