Fee for service payment is one of five major reasons why healthcare in the United States has been slower to embrace comparative effectiveness research than some other countries, says new research.

A misalignment of financial incentives pushes patients and providers to disregard the evidence and pursue aggressive treatments even if they are no more effective than more conservative treatments, said Justin Timbie, lead author of a meta-analysis. He was speaking at a forum in Washington, DC, where the paper, which appears in a a focal issue of Health Affairs that also includes a series of interviews conducted by the RAND Corporation,1 was released.

“Fee for service payment …