Global ideas, national challenges : the introduction of disease management and pay-for-performance in France and Germany

Health systems in many welfare states are undergoing important transformations, triggered by increasing budgetary pressures and characterized by the growing role of market and rationalization measures. In this context, France and Germany have introduced disease management (DM) programs to deliver more structured patient care and pay-for-performance (P4P) measures to provide financial incentives for providers meeting certain objectives.These reforms, which reflect the increasing role of the State in both statutory health insurance systems, were inspired by Anglo-Saxon models but translated in distinct ways, owing to differences in the two countries’ systems. In Germany, DM and P4P were based on increasing competition between sickness funds and between hospitals, while in France these reforms reflected a shift by its central insurance system “from payer to player”.The positioning of the medical profession vis-a-vis these new instruments of governance, which are hierarchical in nature and impose stronger public accountability, was a key issue in both France and Germany. The negotiation processes were accompanied by a growing disconnect between physician representatives and their memberships in both countries, despite significant differences in the way physicians are traditionally integrated into health system regulation.