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Fear of lawsuits affects care, costs

Physician Practice Advisor, July 13, 2005

Fear of lawsuits affects the way physicians treat their cardiac patients and may ultimately drive up costs, a new study finds.

"Our research provides evidence that fear of lawsuits does drive health care providers to unnecessarily admit some patients, which increases health care costs," said David A. Katz, MD, with the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City.

"Physicians respond to the perceived threat of litigation by ordering more referrals and more tests, some of which may be recommended by clinical guidelines and beneficial, but others might be wasteful and harmful," said Dr. Katz. "Our study suggests that interventions to lower emergency physicians' actual and perceived risk of lawsuits could be expected to reduce the practice of defensive medicine and its associated health care costs."

For more information, see the Annals of Emergency Medicine's July 13 online release ("Emergency Physicians' Fear of Malpractice in Evaluating Patients with Possible Acute Cardiac Ischemia"). Annals is available here.

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