EconTech

Sorry, being a bit dramatic. However, I have seen a number of statistics along these lines with respect to the likelihood of physicians being reported for improper care. I want to see an analysis of how much of a rise in insurance costs is distributed among physicians along several dimensions (and not just type of medicine practiced). Why? I’m curious whether a quality [ed. QUALITY?! What do you mean by that? Admittedly, a fuzzy term, but I am busy. Will return to that another day, hopefully.  But basically, it needs to be designed to incentivize good physician behavior and to capture that behavior in its statistical properties.] measure of physician quality (this would probably entail peer review, aka tattling), with insurance costs scaled to different physicians to reflect those differences (like driver history is reflected in your car insurance price). I’m not saying it is a good idea. I’m saying it’s a good idea to investigate. One way or the other, that measure needs to be designed. As a consumer, patients are basically rolling the dice on the set of physicians their insurance covers, of which there is minimal reason to believe that that set has a substantial intersection with the set of physicians with the best record.

Nearly half of all U.S. doctors fail to report incompetent or unethical colleagues

December 4, 2007 in Current Events

A recent Yahoo! News article (”Half of U.S. Doctors mum…“) uncovered some disturbing findings regarding physician practices in the U.S. For instance:

• “They found that 46 percent of physicians surveyed admitted they knew of a serious medical error that had been made but did not tell authorities about it.”
• “Doctors are also surprisingly willing to order unnecessary — and often expensive — tests such as magnetic resonance imaging or MRI scans.”
• “While most of the doctors agreed they needed to keep up with changes in the profession and have their competence reviewed, only 31 percent had undergone a competency review in the past three years.”
• “Just 25 percent said they were looking out to ensure they did not unintentionally treat someone differently because of their sex or race, the survey found. “

What does this tell us about doctors? That they are horrible people? No, simply that they are human.

Physicians–like the rest of us–do not like getting in trouble. They do not like to “tattle” on their colleagues and will order unnecessary tests to protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits. These findings should not come as a surprise; more patients need to realize that doctors make errors and that even physicians can have a “bad day.”