Is Physician Spending Linked to Malpractice Claims?

A 2015 study is coming back to the forefront with a new interview by Dr. Anupam Jena. Dr. Jena authored the 2015 study, Physician spending and subsequent risks of malpractice claims: an observational study. The study attempted to answer the question: is a higher use of resources by physicians associated with a reduced risk of malpractice claims, finding that “across specialties, greater average spending by physicians was associated with reduced risk of incurring a malpractice claim.” The Study Jena and the other researchers matched the spending of 25,000 Florida physicians in 2000-2009 to their malpractice claims. In all specialties, higher resource use was associated with lower rates of malpractice claims in the following year. For example, in internal medicine, 1.5% of physicians in the bottom fifth of spending incurred a malpractice claim, compared to only .3% in the top fifth. In an analysis of roughly 225,000 C-section births, nearly 6% of obstetricians in the bottom fifth of caesarean deliveries had a malpractice claim the following year, compared with 3% in the top fifth. Concluding the study, the authors noted, “Without evidence on rates of errors associated with greater resource use, we cannot definitively conclude that defensive medicine … reduces the number of malpractice claims. However, our findings still suggest that greater resource use is associated with fewer claims, which is consistent with physician beliefs that higher resource use, more general...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs