Defensive Medicine in Israel – A Nationwide Survey

Elad Asher, Sari Greenberg-Dotan, Jonathan Halevy, Shimon Glick and Haim Reuveni

PLOS ONE, 2012, vol. 7, issue 8, 1-7

Abstract: Background: Defensive medicine is the practice of diagnostic or therapeutic measures conducted primarily as a safeguard against possible malpractice liability. We studied the extent, reasons, and characteristics of defensive medicine in the Israeli health care system. Methods and Findings: Cross-sectional study performed in the Israeli health care system between April and July 2008 in a sample (7%) of board certified physicians from eight medical disciplines (internal medicine, pediatrics, general surgery, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedic surgery, cardiology, and neurosurgery). A total of 889 physicians (7% of all Israeli board certified specialists) completed the survey. The majority [60%, (95%CI 0·57–0·63)] reported practicing defensive medicine; 40% (95%CI 0·37–0·43) consider every patient as a potential threat for a medical lawsuit; 25% (95%CI 0·22–0·28) have previously been sued at least once during their career. Independent predictors for practicing defensive medicine were surgical specialty [OR = 1.6 (95%CI 1·2–2·2), p = 0·0004], not performing a fellowship abroad [OR = 1·5 (95%CI 1·1–2), p = 0·027], and previous exposure to lawsuits [OR = 2·4 (95%CI 1·7–3·4), p

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042613 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 42613&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0042613

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042613

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().