The Use of Merit Pay Scales as Incentives in Health Care

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of Merit Pay and Incentives as motivators for increased productivity. The key focus is the system at Richmond Memorial Hospital. To do so, one must begin at the beginning.....
The use of financial incentives (financial rewards) paid to workers whose production exceeds some predetermined standard was popularized by Frederick Taylor in the late 1800s. As a supervisory employee of the Midvale Steel Company, he had become concerned with what he called 'systematic soldiering'. This was the tendency of employees to work at the slowest pace possible and the fact that some of these same workers still had the energy to run home and work on their cabins, even after a hard 12-hour day. Taylor knew that if he could find some way to harness this energy during the workday, huge productivity gains would be achieved (REFERENCE?). Thus was born the concept of motivational and incentive systems.
What is 'motivation?' The root word is 'move' which would mean that anyone who is moved to do something is motivated. …