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Title: | Does patient behaviour drive physicians to practice defensive medicine? Evidence from a video experiment | Authors: | Daniels, Lotte Marneffe, Wim |
Issue Date: | 2023 | Publisher: | BMC | Source: | HEALTH ECONOMICS REVIEW, 13 (1) (Art N° 45) | Abstract: | Objective By manipulating patients' critical attitude in a video experiment, we examined whether physicians are more intended to perform defensive acts because of a higher perceived liability risk in Belgium. Methods We assigned 85 practicing gynaecologists/obstetricians and orthopaedists randomly to four hypothetical video consultations, in which the patients show either a critical attitude (i.e., getting ahead of the facts, showing distrust) or a non-critical attitude (i.e., displaying more neutral questions and expressions). We asked the physicians about the care they would administer in the presented cases and the expected likelihood that the patient would sue the physician in case of a medical incident. Results By manipulating patients' verbal critical attitude (which indicates patients' intention to take further steps), while keeping constant physician's communication, patients' clinical situation, preferences, and non-verbal behaviour in the videos, we were able to discover differential treatment styles driven by physicians' perceived liability risk among patients with a different critical attitude. We found that physicians perform 17 percentage points more defensive acts (e.g., surgeries and diagnostic tests that are not medically necessary) when experiencing a high liability risk. Conclusions Our results show that patients' critical attitude drives physicians' perceived liability risk and consequent defensive behaviour among obstetricians/gynaecologists and orthopaedists. | Notes: | Daniels, L (corresponding author), Hasselt Univ, Fac Business Econ, Martelarenlaan 42, B-3500 Hasselt, Belgium. lotte.daniels@uhasselt.be |
Keywords: | Defensive medicine;Defensive medicine;Medical liability;Medical liability;Video experiment;Video experiment;Patient behaviour JEL Classification I11;Patient behaviour;I14;I18;K32 | Document URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1942/41720 | ISSN: | 2191-1991 | e-ISSN: | 2191-1991 | DOI: | 10.1186/s13561-023-00458-3 | ISI #: | 001073674400001 | Rights: | The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. | Category: | A1 | Type: | Journal Contribution |
Appears in Collections: | Research publications |
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Does patient behaviour drive physicians to practice defensive medicine_ Evidence from a video experiment.pdf | Published version | 1.03 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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