Unhealthy Lawsuits
The Bear on Dec 21 2008 at 9:24 am | Filed under: Health Care
Legal Reform: A physicians’ group has found that the practice of defensive medicine wastes more than a billion dollars a year in Massachusetts alone. Trial lawyers should be ashamed of what they’ve done to health care.
Nine of 10 doctors practice defensive medicine — ordering unneeded laboratory and diagnostic tests, referring patients to consultations they don’t need, performing procedures that aren’t called for, sending patients to hospitals without cause — to avoid being sued, not to benefit their clientele.
Doctors are a favorite prey of trial lawyers, whose litigation against the profession has forced malpractice insurance to unaffordable heights in some cases, driven doctors out of their chosen vocation and sent medical care costs far higher than they should be.
The trial bar has also effectively made it harder for seriously ill patients to be properly diagnosed and treated as doctors clog facilities with patients who are in need of neither.
Suit-happy attorneys have also helped weaken patient safety. To shield themselves, doctors often order unnecessary imaging tests that increase radiation exposure and can cause severe allergic reactions to contrast dye, and perform or arrange surgeries, such as Caesarean sections, when textbook care indicates they’re not needed.
Some doctors, particularly specialists, have done just the opposite, by closing their practices or refusing to see high-risk patients.
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