Defensive medicine implies added or
unnecessary services including: extra screening tests, needless hospitalizations,
prescriptions, and procedures; all in the pursuit to reduce bad outcomes and
decrease the chance of malpractice lawsuits. Defensive medicine is frequently
reported as being a costly and unnecessary and could be reduced by lowering the
amount of frivolous lawsuits. It's also regarded as one of many causes behind
increasing health expenses, however its use is common. One study completed in
2009 by Jackson Medical Care, found that defensive medicine of some form was
practiced by 92% of physicians questioned. A Gallop poll in 2009 found that 78%
of doctors interviewed practiced defensively. The cost of defensive medicine is
calculated at $650-850 billion dollars annually.
Tort reform was supposed to help reduce lawsuits and lower healthcare costs. Many states passed legislation to increase the standards for malpractice in emergency medical care, however, a recent study within the New England Journal of Medicine found that this had little impact on imaging rates, hospital admission rates, and average expenses. Physicians continue to view their risk of litigation as large and that practicing defensively will help reduce this danger. The truth that many malpractice claims are dismissed did not matter. Fiscal costs and the personal toll of malpractice lawsuits are extremely real – the average doctor spends almost 11% of a 40-year career with open and unresolved malpractice claims according to one study.
One suggestion to help restrict unsupported legal claims incorporates “safe harbors” to utilizing evidence-based guidelines in practice. These guidelines will be hard to establish with many contradictory recommendations around. Development of practice guidelines for safe harbor protection will soon be extremely challenging, but has the potential to benefit both patients and providers, which has not been the case with existing tort reform efforts.
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