Depending upon whom you believe, the numbers are all over the place in terms of how much defensive medicine costs the healthcare industry and the country.
Defensive medicine costs total between $100 billion and $178 billion per year, according to Stuart Weinstein, MD, in an article in the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. The cost rises dramatically when you include the cost of defending malpractice cases, compensation payouts and additional administrative costs. Weinstein put the tab that the average American family pays to cover the cost of defensive medicine at $1,700 to $2,000 annually.
A recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine estimated the cost of defensive medicine to be $60 billion annually. Another estimate put the total between $650 billion to $850 billion spent on unnecessary medical care.
The solution proposed by many is tort reform - capping damages. At last week's iHT2 Summit Health IT Summit in Denver, Barry Chaiken, MD, CMO of DocsNetwork Ltd., and outgoing HIMSS chairman, said that the medical malpractice system is "broken." He suggested a malpractice system that is no fault and that empowers quality.
Here's another thought. It may be Holy Grail thinking today, but if we get to a critical mass of EHR adoption, the scenario could very well play out. By the time we get to critical mass, one hopes, that EHR systems have matured. If physicians use the clinical decision support in EHRs and employ evidence-based medicine, which are either already embedded in the EHR or can be loaded into the application, there's a good chance that patient safety would be enhanced and a higher quality of care would be provided. Say all physicians practiced medicine this way and best practices and reporting for quality and meaningful use were employed. If all healthcare providers followed national standard guidelines, malpractice caseloads would shrink, leaving us to deal with true malpractice cases.
Is this a pipe dream? Can EHRs impact medical malpractice? Share your thoughts.
