The impact of medical errors on physician behavior: Evidence from malpractice litigation

Shurtz, Ity

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.11.011

Cited by 57 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…They find that certain types of tort reforms increase, and others decrease, procedure use. In line with the finding that liability matters for physician behavior, a very recent study based on U.S. data is the first to show that physicians react to medical error (and related litigation) and increase CS rates as a consequence (Shurtz, 2013).…”

mentioning

confidence: 80%

Can Caesarean section improve child and maternal health? The case of breech babies

Jensen¹,

Wüst²

2015

Journal of Health Economics

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confidence: 80%

Can Caesarean section improve child and maternal health? The case of breech babies

Jensen¹,

Wüst²

2015

Journal of Health Economics

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“…Mixed empirical findings have been reached exploiting similar variations in malpractice pressure triggered by tort reforms with reference to the U.S.. For instance, the introduction of caps on damages is considered a decrease in pressure while the introduction of forms of joint and several liabilities has been classified as an increase in pressure. When pressure goes up it has been proved that you might have less obstetric preventable complications (Iizuka, 2013;Currie and MacLeod, 2008), more cesarean sections (Shurtz, 2013), and less cesarean sections (Currie and MacLeod, 2008). Decreases in malpractice pressure have been linked to no impact on cesarean sections (Frakes, 2012;Sloan et al, 1997), less cesarean sections (Localio et al, 1993), and more cesarean sections (Currie and MacLeod, 2008;Dubay et al, 1999).…”

Section: Effects Of Medical Malpractice Pressure: Theory and Availablmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the rationales used to avoid experience rating at the physicians level do not necessarily find a place when dealing with hospitals' claims experience. It has been noticed that most of the policy related to medical malpractice mainly address individual physician behaviors, while the hospital dimension has been often neglected (Currie and MacLeod, 2008;Shurtz, 2013). Empirical evidence from the U.K. has shown how risk policies designed at the hospital level can substantially decrease infection rates (i.e., Fenn et al, 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

Does Experience Rating Improve Obstetric Practices? Evidence from Geographical Discontinuities

Amaral-Garcia,

Bertoli,

Grembi

2014

SSRN Journal

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We provide an assessment of the introduction of experience rating for medical malpractice insurance using 2002-2009 inpatient discharge records data on deliveries from the Italian Region of Piedmont. Considering experience rating as an increase in medical malpractice pressure, we show that such increase decreased the incidence of cesarean sections between 7 and 11.6% with no consequences on a broadly defined measure of complications. Our identification strategy exploits the territorial peculiarities of Piedmont: its 33 hospitals are distributed across 16 Courts' districts, 10 of which use schedules of non economic damages to set compensations for personal injuries and 6 do not. We use this ex-ante policy conditions to distinguish treated from control and implement first a difference in difference analysis, the robustness of which we test through a basic difference in discontinuities specification. We show that our results are robust to the different methodologies, and they can be explained in terms of a reduction in the discretion over obstetric decisions rather than a change in the risk profile of the patients.

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“…The choice of Caesarean section as our outcome measure was triggered by numerous studies that have shown that obstetrics is a specialty that is particularly impacted by defensive medicine [6][7][8][9][10][11]. In the case of a birth injury, the obstetrician is more likely to be suspected of negligence when the baby is delivered vaginally compared to by Caesarean section.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of the mass media on obstetricians’ behavior in Norway

2017

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Little is known about how physicians and hospitals respond to the risk of being negatively exposed in the mass media. We assume that newspapers will cover events more closely in the areas where they have most of their circulation. Within such areas the likelihood of negative publicity increases. The research question is whether obstetricians respond to negative newspaper coverage by choosing the least risky method of delivery, i.e. Caesarean section. This was tested on a large set of data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway for the period 2000-2011. The Registry contains detailed medical information about all deliveries, for both the mother and the infant. This set of data was merged with a set of data that contained information about newspaper coverage for the municipalities in which all hospitals were located. Altogether, more than 620 000 deliveries in 46 municipalities were included in the study. The data were analyzed using a hospital 3 fixed effects regression. The main result was that newspaper coverage had a significant positive effect on the probability of having a Caesarean section. Several supplementary analyses supported the main finding. Altogether, our results indicate that obstetricians are sensitive to the risk of being exposed in the mass media. This is likely to be because obstetricians care about their reputation.

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The impact of medical errors on physician behavior: Evidence from malpractice litigation

Cited by 57 publications

References 15 publications

Can Caesarean section improve child and maternal health? The case of breech babies

Can Caesarean section improve child and maternal health? The case of breech babies

Does Experience Rating Improve Obstetric Practices? Evidence from Geographical Discontinuities

The impact of the mass media on obstetricians’ behavior in Norway

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