Campbell’s Law: implications for health care

Abstract

Campbell’s Law is a well-known social science dictum describing the potential ill-effects of using a quantitative measure both as a target and an indicator to drive decision making. Campbell’s Law states that using a measure in this way tends to distort its usefulness to achieve the desired goal while driving participants to adopt corrupt practices. There is evidence of Campbell’s Law at play in various industries, including health care. Fortunately, the deleterious effects of Campbell’s Law can be successfully mitigated. The two main mitigation strategies involve either keeping the goals of a functioning system separated from the metrics used to assess progress towards that goal, or ensuring the proper safeguards are in place to combat the corrupting pressures.