Over 60 per cent of American physicians say they practice this kind of "defensive" medicine. But researchers had never studied whether this behavior actually limited a physician's exposure to malpractice liability.
So, a team led by Dr. Anupam Jena, a health economist at Harvard Medical School, pored over hospital spending data from nearly 25,000 physicians in Florida between 2000 to 2009. Thanks to the Sunshine State’s famously liberal open-records laws, they also obtained all the claims for personal injury damages filed against the doctors.
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