Talk:Defensive medicine

Need expansion and use of variety of reliable sources

This article seems of more importance as of late due to the health care debate and other issues that revolve around this and tort reform. I am not experienced at writing articles for wikipedia. I do, however, feel this article should be given more attention and it doesn't include a lot of the information reguarding it from the congressional budget office and the GAO. This made me immediately suspicious of bias upon visiting the article. So, perhaps, the studies that contradict the very existence of defensive medicine to even be noted should be considered in this article. So far, the only real notoriety defensive medicine gets is from anecdotal evidence from doctors. These anecdotes do not reflect the studies from the CBO and GAO. They do however reflect some other studies by the AMA (possible bias). It should be noted however that the importance of defensive medicine in the cost of health care in the united states is extremely low, almost akin to a rounding error. The little importants the cost defensive medicine reflects in the studies should also be noted.

Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beinghuman1 (talk • contribs) 03:12, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree. There is no evidentiary basis or citation for the idea that "defensive medicine" is harmful to patients, and the logical incongruity of such an idea indicates bias. In the anecdote cited, what would have been harmful to the patient about having the test done? There is no such explanation. To the contrary, the outcome of the resulting legal proceeding suggests it would have permitted diagnosis of the disease in time for other treatment to be possible. The patient then, was harmed because "defensive medicine" was not practiced, not because it was. Nor is it expressed anywhere how that doctor's future conduct harmed patients, aside from the unexpressed presumption that increased testing is ordered. Yet there is no explanation as to how increased testing is actually bad for the patients. This is particularly troublesome because the unsupported statement that "defensive medicine" is harmful to patients on average is presented, in conclusory fashion, to rebut the statement that medical malpractice is viewed as a means to ensure patients receive proper treatment.

The end result is that Defensive Medicine as a concept is portrayed as subjective or theoretical in nature, and it should be presented in that light, with a subsection devoted to criticism or competing theories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.144.123.197 (talk) 22:01, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Expansion

I'd say this article could use some expansion. Here was an attempt. I reverted because it appeared to be a personal essay, but there is probably some good data/sources there to bring into the article. Jesanj (talk) 12:17, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

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Dispute

The statements in the Lead that "Physicians order tests and avoid treating high-risk patients to reduce their exposure to lawsuits" is a bit misnomer- as failure to treat can also be cause for malpractice litigation in the United States in the context of a civil tort, as a civil tort could generally be construed from failure to act where one has a duty to act, by inherent definitions of the standard of civil liability. I would recommend revising the section to more accurately reflect that "avoiding treating high risk patients" will actually tend to increase one's exposure to litigation in the long run, in the technical sense. 71.91.178.54 (talk) 00:46, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

The context is obviously when they have a choice about who/how to treat (I added a clarifying note about that detail to the lede). You would need a ref to avoid your WP:OR analysis that this has a long-term effect other than as stated. DMacks (talk) 04:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Wider perspective needed

The current article positions defensive medicine explicitly as a response to the risk of tort liability or at least tort litigation. However, the term is also used in countries where such concerns are not present because of the existence of a no-fault compensation system for medical errors, e.g. PMC 8725848 and PMID 8132141. Here, the concern is instead with the potential of becoming a subject of medical disciplinary procedures or investigation by medical supervisory authorities. I'll try to add this context to the article in near future. InsaneHacker (💬) 19:44, 2 January 2023 (UTC)