{"id":527004,"date":"2010-04-13T18:25:14","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T22:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/04\/13\/docs-still-say-malpractice-fears-often-add-to-health-care-costs\/"},"modified":"2010-04-13T18:25:14","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T22:25:14","slug":"docs-still-say-malpractice-fears-often-add-to-health-care-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/527004","title":{"rendered":"Docs Still Say Malpractice Fears Often Add to Health-Care Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gavel\"During the health-care debate, the impact of medical malpractice suits was controversial, with the Republicans saying it was a key part of the escalating cost issue and the Democrats saying, not so much. For its part, the CBO estimated<\/a> tort-law changes would cut only about 0.5% from U.S. health-care spending.<\/p>\n

A study now reinforces the long-held belief of many doctors that malpractice -\u0096 or fear of same \u0097 is really pretty important on the cost front after all. Researchers wanted to know if physicians\u0092 behavior and attitudes explain some of the regional variations in the number of intensive procedures. (Citing the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, they said the rate of a given cardiac procedure might be three to eight times higher in one area of the country than another, depending on the procedure.) The researchers surveyed 598 cardiologists across the U.S. about what non-clinical reasons might lead them to recommend cardiac catheterization. They also calculated a doctor\u0092s \u0093cardiac intensity score\u0094 \u0097 a quantitative measure of his or her propensity to test and treat, based on his or her response to hypothetical patient scenarios.<\/p>\n

The study<\/a>, published online in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, found that nearly 24% of those surveyed reported that fear of malpractice was a non-clinical factor in their decision to recommend catheterization; docs with high intensity scores were more likely to say that legal fears influenced their recommendation. And 27% said if they thought their colleagues were likely to order the procedure, they would too. Researchers also asked doctors if they\u0092d recommend the test because \u0093the patient expects it,\u0094 \u0093to satisfy the expectations of the referring physician,\u0094 or to enhance \u0093the financial stability\u0094 of a medical practice. (Surprisingly, five doctors actually admitted they frequently or sometimes recommended catheterization for that last reason.) <\/p>\n

Only the fear of malpractice, however, was significantly associated with regional differences in the level of health-care services used. \u0093I think this study provides enough evidence to think it\u0092s maybe a target for intervention,\u0094 says F. Lee Lucas, lead author of the study and associate director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at Maine Medical Center, who found the malpractice findings surprising. \u0093It seemed to be, for a fair number of physicians, to be a clear motivation for doing something potentially unnecessary.\u0094 <\/p>\n

Even for doctors who aren\u0092t directly affected by malpractice suits, the fear of being sued may lead them to order more tests than they otherwise might have \u0096 that\u0092s so-called defensive medicine.<\/p>\n

Image: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the health-care debate, the impact of medical malpractice suits was controversial, with the Republicans saying it was a key part of the escalating cost issue and the Democrats saying, not so much. For its part, the CBO estimated tort-law changes would cut only about 0.5% from U.S. health-care spending. A study now reinforces the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6750,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6750"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}