Effects of the medical liability system in Australia, the UK, and the USA

Kessler, Daniel P.; Summerton, Nick; Graham, John R.

doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(06)69045-4

Cited by 107 publications

(82 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…These recommendations often result in physicians feeling compelled to prescribe these anticoagulants to avoid potential litigation [30]. The increased risk of bleeding complications has encouraged several experienced surgeons who perform joint arthroplasty to emphasize caution in the use of these anticoagulants [5].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potent Anticoagulants are Associated with a Higher All-Cause Mortality Rate After Hip and Knee Arthroplasty

Sharrock

Valle

et al. 2008

Clinical Orthopaedics &Amp; Related Research

164

116

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potent Anticoagulants are Associated with a Higher All-Cause Mortality Rate After Hip and Knee Arthroplasty

Sharrock

Valle

et al. 2008

Clinical Orthopaedics &Amp; Related Research

164

116

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“…In a similar spirit, Sobel et al [38] find that 60% of all urologists answering a questionnaire are thinking about limiting the scope of their practice. Notably, by summarizing the empirical literature for Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA, Kessler et al [28] find that negative defensive medicine defined as avoiding treatment of certain categories is practiced by around 40% of all physicians. This confirms that extending the theoretical analysis from the impact of liability systems on positive to negative defensive medicine seems worthwhile.…”

Section: Motivation and Main Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Malpractice liability, technology choice and negative defensive medicine

Feess

2011

Eur J Health Econ

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We extend the theoretical literature on the impact of malpractice liability by allowing for two treatment technologies, a safe and a risky one. The safe technology bears no failure risk, but leads to patient-specific disutility since it cannot completely solve the health problems. By contrast, the risky technology (for instance a surgery) may entirely cure patients, but fail with some probability depending on the hospital's care level. Tight malpractice liability increases care levels if the risky technology is chosen at all, but also leads to excessively high incentives for avoiding the liability exposure by adopting the safe technology. We refer to this distortion toward the safe technology as negative defensive medicine. Taking the problem of negative defensive medicine seriously, the second best optimal liability needs to balance between the over-incentive for the safe technology in case of tough liability and the incentive to adopt little care for the risky technology in case of weak liability. In a model with errors in court, we find that gross negligence where hospitals are held liable only for very low care levels outperforms standard negligence, even though standard negligence would implement the first best efficient care level.

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“…The costs do not include the cost of defensive medicine, i.e. medical tests, procedures or visits to reduce exposure to malpractice liability (Studdert et al 2005;Kessler et al 2006). Although these indirect costs are unknown, raw estimates are available.…”

Section: Administration Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%