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The Cost of Defensive Medicine on 3 Hospital Medicine Services

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: The overuse of tests and procedures due to fear of malpractice litigation, known as defensive medicine,1 is estimated to cost $46 billion annually in the US,2 but these costs have been measured only indirectly. We estimated the cost of defensive medicine on three hospital medicine services in a health system by having physicians assess the defensiveness of their own orders. We hypothesized that physicians who were concerned about being targeted by litigation would practice more defensively and have higher overall costs.

Source: JAMA Internal Medicine

DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.4649

Authors: Michael B. Rothberg, Joshua Class, Tara F. Bishop, Jennifer Friderici, Reva Kleppel, Peter K. Lindenauer