Do Doctors Practice Defensive Medicine?
(623 K)
|
NBER Working Paper No. 5466
Issued in February 1996
NBER Program(s): HC LE
The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.
You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.
`Defensive medicine' is a potentially serious social problem: if fear of liability drives health care providers to administer treatments that do not have worthwhile medical benefits, then the current liability system may generate inefficiencies many times greater than the costs of compensating malpractice claimants. To obtain direct empirical evidence on this question, we analyze the effects of malpractice liability reforms using data on all elderly Medicare beneficiaries treated for serious heart disease in 1984, 1987, and 1990. We find that malpractice reforms that directly reduce provider liability pressure lead to reductions of 5 to 9 percent in medical expenditures without substantial effects on mortality or medical complications. We conclude that liability reforms can reduce defensive medical practices.
Published:
- Kessler, Daniel and Mark McClellan. "Do Doctors Practice Defense Medicine?," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1996, v111(2,May), 353-390.
,
- Towards a More Effective Monetary Policy, Kuroda, Twao, ed.,: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 137-164.
This paper is available as PDF (623 K) or via email.
Machine-readable bibliographic record -
MARC,
RIS,
BibTeX
|
|
|
About
Support
The research activities of the NBER are funded by grants from federal research agencies, by private foundations, and by generous donations from our corporate associates and from private individuals. The NBER is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. For information on supporting the NBER, please contact:
Mr. Denis Healy, Director of Development
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138-5398
ph: 617-868-3900
email: dhealy@nber.org
Close
