TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of medical errors on physician behavior
T2 - Evidence from malpractice litigation
AU - Shurtz, Ity
N1 - Funding Information:
I am indebted to David Card, Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez for their guidance and support. I thank the editor and two anonymous referees of this journal and Zach Liscow, Issi Romem and seminar participants at UC Berkeley for very helpful comments and discussions. Financial support from the Institute of Business and Economics Research in UC Berkeley is gratefully acknowledged.
PY - 2013/3/1
Y1 - 2013/3/1
N2 - How do medical errors affect physician behavior? Despite the importance of this question empirical evidence about it remains limited. This paper studies the impact of obstetricians' medical errors that resulted in malpractice litigation on their subsequent choice of whether to perform a C-section, a common procedure that is thought to be sensitive to physician incentives. The main result is that C-section rates jumped discontinuously by 4% after a medical error, establishing an association between medical errors and treatment patterns. C-section rates continued to increase afterwards, bringing the cumulative increase 2.5 years after a medical error to 8%.
AB - How do medical errors affect physician behavior? Despite the importance of this question empirical evidence about it remains limited. This paper studies the impact of obstetricians' medical errors that resulted in malpractice litigation on their subsequent choice of whether to perform a C-section, a common procedure that is thought to be sensitive to physician incentives. The main result is that C-section rates jumped discontinuously by 4% after a medical error, establishing an association between medical errors and treatment patterns. C-section rates continued to increase afterwards, bringing the cumulative increase 2.5 years after a medical error to 8%.
KW - Peer effects
KW - Physician treatment styles
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84872450646&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.11.011
DO - 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.11.011
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84872450646
SN - 0167-6296
VL - 32
SP - 331
EP - 340
JO - Journal of Health Economics
JF - Journal of Health Economics
IS - 2
ER -