Financial incentives for employees as part of a policy to upgrade care in a public hospital in Volta Redonda,Rio de Janeiro State,Brazil

The authors present and analyze six years of regular and steady application of an institutional evaluation policy based on financial incentives in a public hospital in Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, as a part of the hospital's administrative modernization policy. This type of policy is considered implicitly capable of developing a sequence of strategic wagers: (1) release of financial resources for payment of bonuses; (2) creation of an operationally feasible and sensitive evaluation instrument; (3) creation of adequate management mechanisms to improve evaluation policy; (4) employee adherence to the hospital upgrading policy based on the bonus system; and (5) maintenance of the effects of evaluation policy over time. The article discusses the "degree of success" of each of these wagers in an attempt to portray possible gains throughout the process, while also identifying inherent difficulties in such a policy.