The Ecology of Defensive Medicine and Malpractice Litigation

The Ecology of Defensive Medicine and Malpractice Litigation

Using an evolutionary game, we show that patients and physicians can interact with predator-prey relationships. Litigious patients who seek compensation are the 'predators' and physicians are their 'prey'. Physicians can adapt to the risk of being sued by performing defensive medicine. We find that improvements in clinical safety can increase the share of litigious patients and leave unchanged ...

Defensive Medicine and Medical Malpractice

The defensive effect of medical practice policies in malpractice litigation.

According to the prevailing discourse in health policy circles, America's medical system is in the grips of two "crises": one of health care spending and one of medical malpractice liability. Although this crisis mentality may result in part from uncritical acceptance of interest group dogma, to the extent that a crisis is in fact widely perceived, it has the quality of a selffulfilling prophes...

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...

Defensive Medicine and Medical Malpractice (Part 6 of 19)

A lthough it is impossible to measure with much Precision the extent of defensive medicine, the evidence summarized in Chapter 3 implies that it is neither a trivial nor a major contributor to health care costs. This chapter examines how different approaches to reforming the medical malpractice system might affect the frequency of defensive medicine. The chapter examines the potential for tort ...