Doctors Who Are Afraid Of Lawsuits Are Driving Up U.S. Health Care Spending BY SY MUKHERJEE ON AUGUST 14, 2013 AT 4:47 PM Doctors who are concerned that they might get sued are more likely to order unnecessary tests and procedures than those who don’t fear legal retaliation, according to a new Health Affairs study. Some say that the findings highlight the need to address the practice of so-called “defensive medicine,” which can drive up national health care spending. Researchers surveyed thousands of doctors to assess how concerned they were about the possibility of malpractice suits. They then pored through Medicare claims data from patients who were suffering from symptoms that could be temporary and benign — specifically, headaches, back pain, and chest pain — but could also be indicative of a more serious medical condition. Doctors who were highly concerned about a malpractice lawsuit performed additional testing on twice as many headache patients as doctors who were less concerned. Nearly a third of the back pain patients who saw litigation-wary doctors were referred for additional imaging tests, versus 18 percent of those who saw unconcerned doctors. And chest pain patients were less likely to be asked to perform a stress test — which can cause a heart attack — in favor of hospitalization by physicians who were worried about getting sued. Strikingly, even doctors who lived in states that place limits on their financial liability in the case of malpractice lawsuits would order more tests if they “felt” that they might be sued. “We are finding that the focus should be on how physicians are feeling — that has real implications for future policies,” wrote lead study author Michelle Mello. Some say that addressing these defensive medicine practices is an easy way to lower U.S. health care costs, since many of these tests may in fact be redundant. Earlier research has shown that defensive medicine adds about $50 billion to U.S. health care spending per year. Maura Calsyn, the associate director of health policy at the Center for American Progress, suggested one possible way to address the problem through legislation in an interview with Reuters. Calsyn recommended a so-called “safe harbor” system in which doctors would be required to abide by a set of universal guidelines that stem from evidence-based best medical practices. Physicians would be immune from malpractice litigation as long as they followed those guidelines. “We recommend safe harbors because they will help improve patient care and go a long way to help the doctor practice better medicine,” said Calsyn
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 00:57:14 +0000
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