In most cases, hospitals and doctors receive more money for performing a cesarean section than they do for a vaginal delivery. Some insurers have experimented with paying the same amount for each kind of delivery, to remove positive incentives for possibly unnecessary cesarean births.

Productivity systems that compensate physicians by appointments filled, rather than for the care of a population of patients, encourage the scheduling of frequent return visits, one of the biggest contributors to full schedules and the inability of physicians to see their patients when they need to be seen. Patients are either given appointments many weeks from the day of their request or, for more urgent requests, are given an "overbook" appointment resulting in long delays on the day of the appointment. If physicians were compensated for the care of a defined population of patients, the incentive would be reversed.