Incentives on Medicaid Beneficiaries ’ Compliance with Well-Child Visit Guidelines

increase the use of preventive care by Medicaid beneficiaries, but few evaluative studies exist. This study evaluates a Target gift card incentive employed by a Minnesota health plan serving Medicaid beneficiaries over the period 2002–2003. Lacking a contemporaneous control group, the proximity between the child’s residence and the nearest Target store was used as the intervention variable. Using alternative specifications for the intervention variable, results of the difference-in-differences equations suggest that the incentive program significantly increased the likelihood that a Medicaid beneficiary would have a well-child visit. Periodic well-child visits and annual preven-tive checkups for children have been found to be effective preventive health care measures (Hakim and Bye 2001). In October 2000, Medica Health Plans, a health insurer head-quartered in Minnesota, introduced an incen-tive into its managed care plan for Medicaid beneficiaries in an attempt to increase com-pliance with the Minnesota Department of Human Services ’ guidelines for Child and Teen Checkup