Doctors believe that disclosing mistakes would increase trust in the profession but this would come at the expense of more defensive practice, increased litigation and a worsening effect on medical regulation.
One by-product of all this litigation: defensive lawyering, as attorneys write elaborate memos to justify their behavior in case they get sued.
Ultimately, companies need to think creatively and approach the issue not from a defensive standpoint to avoid litigation.
Since the days of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have wanted legal reform, believing that our economic competitiveness is being shackled by the billions we spend annually on tort costs; an estimated 10 cents of every health care dollar paid by individuals and companies goes for litigation and defensive medicine.
Obamacare still fails to control high medical costs arising from defensive medicine and malpractice litigation.
This change in practice is the equivalent to defensive practice-to avoid litigation rather than in the best interests of the patient.
Contrary to popular beliefs, this is not a problem driven mainly by the aging of the baby boom generation, or the high cost of prescription drugs, or medical malpractice litigation that spawns defensive medicine.
The litigation is a "defensive action by Intel to stop the flow of personnel from Intel subsidiaries to Broadcom," says John Joseph, a semiconductor industry analyst at Salomon Smith Barney.
While there was a trend for doctors to be more concerned than consumers about the costs associated with the practice of defensive medicine for fear of litigation, this difference was not statistically significantly different (OR 1.3, 99% CI 0.90, 1.8).
Then, complexity does not mitigate the relationship between malpractice litigation risk and defensive medicine, but has the opposite effect.
