invitation – of the usual corporate-wellness-type – to begin a smoking cessation program. After a year, the financial incentive group’s quit rate was 14.7%; the invitation group’s, only 5.0%. There were some relapses over the months that followed, but at roughly similar rates: the financial incentive group’s quit rate after 18 months was 9.4%, and the invitation group’s was 3.6%. “The study led to GE developing and adopting that program for all of its 152,000 employees in the U.S.,” Volpp says with evident satisfaction. “We felt we had done something that really had the potential to improve people’s health.” The study appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine (“A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Financial Incentives for Smoking Cessation,” by Kevin G. Volpp, M.D., et al., February 12, 2009). It also received recognition by the British Medical Journal Group’s “Improving Health” Awards, which granted its 2010 “Getting Research into Practice” award to Volpp and colleagues David Asch, Mark Pauly, Janet Audrain, and their team – out of about 250 nominees. Financial incentives, such as a cash payment or a chance in a lottery, are a major weapon in the arsenal of behavioral economics. Another is monitoring, or “automated hovering” – basically, an approach
Kevin Volpp confers with two colleagues: David Asch, executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Innovation, and Jingsan Zhu, assistant director of CHIBE.
that allows for ongoing rapid feedback and support for patients or employees, using a combination of wireless devices and behavioral economic engagement. Volpp and his colleagues have been mounting these types of studies to address the medication non-adherence problem, which he characterizes as “a huge, huge problem.” “Shockingly, study after study shows this is the case. For example, let’s say someone is admitted to
to medications in the year following hospital admission for a heart attack is only about 39%. There’s lots of clinical trial evidence that these medications can be lifesaving – can lower the rate of having another heart attack by 30, 40, 50%. But if you don’t take them, the benefits are never realized.” CHIBE is working on several initiatives to improve medication adherence, including one that will be in the field shortly,
One method that Volpp and colleagues frequently test is offering financial incentives for people to change their behavior – which gives them a foreseeable reward for their actions instead of expecting them to focus on a far-off goal. the hospital with a heart attack. Typically they are prescribed a cholesterol-lowering medicine called a statin; a beta blocker, aspirin, an ACE inhibitor; if they have a stent, they are typically prescribed something called Plavix which helps keep their arteries open. But the average adherence
funded by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, and involving partnerships with a number of insurers in the New Jersey-Pennsylvania area. Such studies employ a technological toolbox called “The Way to Health.” It was built by Volpp and David A. Asch, M.D., M.B.A. (now execu-
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