Lizzie Fletcher: “as a practicing physician, the possibility of malpractice was always there in the back of your mind, because you wanted…”

“as a practicing physician, the possibility of malpractice was always there in the back of your mind, because you wanted to make sure you delivered the most quality care you could to your patients. I can think of generally, probably a day did not go by when there were things that you felt like, well, I do not really think we need this, but because of the way malpractice is, we are going to order a specific test. A patient that comes in with a headache, you may not see them again for a while, and you order an $800 or a $1,000 MRI just to make sure that if something happens way in the future that you do not incur some sort of frivolous lawsuit. But let me talk about a couple of things. One, according to Daniel P. Kessler, an associate professor at Stanford Business School, when he looked at direct costs, he said they may be relatively small, the direct costs of liability. I think clearly we can say they are fairly significant. But they are small relative to the indirect costs which he estimates five times. For that reason and for the quality of care, to make sure that we do not promote defensive medicine, I urge my colleagues to support this, as most of the physicians across the country would agree.”