A pediatrician laments, no one ever talks about defensive medicine. I’ll have to invite Dr. Orr to read this blog:
Orr says physicians have to practice “defensive medicine” to protect themselves against being sued. Having that as a premise means doctors will order more expensive testing even if they don’t think it is necessary.“Malpractice also put the healer at odds with the person coming to be healed,” said Orr.
“It is one of the biggest costs in medicine that no one ever talks about,” said Orr. “We have to order an MRI just to prove they don’t have a brain tumor, even though we know they don’t.”
He also says aggressive advertising encourages patients to come in and want expensive high tech medical testing.
One of his stories illustrates, how a mother of an autistic child who blamed Orr for providing poor breast-feeding counseling sued him.
“It is a horrible thing to go through. You doubt yourself and practice more defensively,” said Orr. “It was five weeks of torture defending myself, all because of the power of the people bringing the suit.”
Orr won the lawsuit but it was a stressful and emotional ordeal for him.
Related posts:
- Unnecessary workup in the emergency department
- Malpractice and physician suicide
- The choice between malpractice and insurance fraud
- Reasons why doctors practice defensive medicine
- Defensive medicine is aggressive
- Perfection is expensive
- Why it is so easy to onder unnecessary tests
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