Defensive Medicine, Cost Containment, and Reform

The Differential Effects of Malpractice Reform: Defensive Medicine in Obstetrics

Despite widespread reports of defensive medicine in surveys of physicians, empirical investigations have produced conflicting evidence. This paper models the interactions in a health insurance market, predicting that rises in medical malpractice pressure have non-monotonic effects on health care spending. Spending rises with malpractice pressure until reaching a threshold, and decreases thereaf...

The Effects of Malpractice Tort Reform on Defensive Medicine

As the rising cost of malpractice threatens to reduce the number of hospitals and physicians in various states across the nation, policy-makers must examine the factors contributing to these crises. Beyond studying the symptoms of malpractice crises, such as increasing claims frequency and severity manifested through increasing malpractice premia, policy-makers must consider flaws within the ma...

The Culture of Defensive Medicine: Is Tort Reform Necessary?

This paper examines the culture of defensive medicine that has spread rapidly across the United States in response to an increase in malpractice lawsuits and staggering malpractice insurance premiums in certain high-risk medical and surgical specialties. Due to the presence of this culture, it is important to question whether tort reform (e.g. placing caps on jury awards) is necessary to curb r...

The cost of defensive medicine on 3 hospital medicine services.

Complaints, shame and defensive medicine.

While the complaints process is intended to improve healthcare, some doctors appear to practise defensive medicine after receiving a complaint. This response occurs in countries that use a tort-based medicolegal system as well as in countries with less professional liability. Defensive medicine is based on avoiding malpractice liability rather than considering a risk-benefit analysis for both i...