Does Defensive Medicine “Work”?
Defensive medicine is a difficult problem to pin down. Though the majority of physicians report practicing defensive medicine when surveyed, it is difficult to determine the true scale of the issue and its influence on the healthcare system. Join us on Healthcare Matters as we sit down with Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD to discuss the study Physician spending and subsequent risk of malpractice claims: observational study, which was published last November in The BMJ. In the first part of our interview with Dr. Jena, the study’s lead author, he explains that he and his co-authors set out to answer the question of whether or not physicians who ordered more tests and procedures as compared to other physicians were less likely to be sued for medical malpractice.
A medical doctor and economist, Dr. Jena is Associate Professor of Healthcare Policy and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an assistant physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research areas include medical malpractice, the economics of medical innovation and cost effectiveness, geographic variation in medical care and insurance benefit design.
See Part I of our wide-ranging interview with Dr. Jena below, or watch the entire program here.
