Health care costs: Defensive medicine
12th April 2010
Recent health care reform legislation doesn’t take any meaningful steps towards reducing or controlling costs. In fact, it explicitly forbids states from trying to curtail the costs of malpractice litigation in any way that would reduce lawyers’ fees.
Anytime we tell anyone anything, any kind of advice, doctors must consider the risk of a lawsuit. Everything we say and do is supposed to be documented, too– to defend ourselves. Every wonder why the doc spends so much time scribbling in the chart, instead of talking to you? It’s not because we like writing. It’s because every single day we’re reminded that the chart is our only defense.