The Impact of State Tort Reforms on Imaging Utilization

摘要

Purpose: Defensive medicine, broadly defined as medical practices that protect physicians from malpractice lawsuits without providing benefits to patients, can lead to wasteful use of health care resources and higher cost. Although physicians cite malpractice liability as an important factor driving their decisions to order imaging tests, little research has been done to examine the systematic impact of liability pressure on overall imaging. The authors examined the extent to which radiography use is influenced by malpractice liability pressure among office-based physicians.