The ideal when you go to a doctor’s office is that you will be cared for attentively and at a sensible cost by a capable physician. You expect him to take reasonable care to ensure that he determines accurately what is ailing you, and provides an appropriate remedy whenever possible.
But it should be troubling to us all that the overwhelming majority of 1,200 doctors surveyed recently acknowledged that some physicians provide more tests and treatments than necessary, as a guard against medical malpractice lawsuits.
The survey included all sorts of doctors — from those in emergency rooms to surgeons to primary-care physicians.
It asked these questions:
* “Do physicians order more tests and procedures than patients need to protect themselves from malpractice suits?”
* “Are protections against unwarranted malpractice lawsuits needed to decrease the unnecessary use of diagnostic tests?”
To both questions, a remarkable 91 percent of doctors said, “Yes.”
The problem with excessive tests and treatments is not just that they are a time-wasting inconvenience for patients, but that they cost many billions of dollars each year. That’s money that should be used more productively by our people in our economy for more beneficial care.
Part of the solution should be medical malpractice reform.
Any patient who has truly been harmed through the negligence or poor performance of a medical worker should, of course, be provided just compensation for his actual economic losses and pain-and-suffering damages in sensible proportion to the harm done. But instead, malpractice laws are sometimes abused to secure “jackpot” results out of proportion to the harm actually done.
That is what sometimes may prompt doctors “defensively” to require more costly tests and procedures than are really necessary. Both medical care and laws should be reasonable and just.