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internal medicine
“Physicians feel they are vulnerable to malpractice lawsuits even when they practice competently within the standard of care,” said Tara Bishop, MD, associate, Division of General Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and coauthor of the study, in a news release. “The study shows that an overwhelming majority of physicians support tort reform to decrease malpractice lawsuits and that unnecessary testing, a contributor to rising healthcare costs, will not decrease without it.”
Physicians were asked to rate their level of agreement to 2 statements:
- “Doctors order more tests and procedures than patients need to protect themselves against malpractice suits,” and
- “Unnecessary use of diagnostic tests will not decrease without protections for physicians against unwarranted malpractice suits.”
There were no statistically significant differences between sex, geographic location, specialty category, or type of practice. The largest difference was that 92.6% of male physicians said they practice defensive medicine vs 86.5% of female physicians.
[Via:Archives of Internal Medicine]