Almost 45% of physicians say that they have practiced defensive medicine, according to a survey of 1,001 physicians conducted by Physicians Practice, a practice management newspaper and website.
To be exact, 44.6% of respondents said that they had ordered tests or procedures that they “thought were probably not medically necessary just to avoid a potential lawsuit,” Physicians Practice reported in its 2015 Great American Physician Survey.
Almost 44% of the physician respondents said that they had been threatened with a malpractice lawsuit, and nearly 32% reported that they had been the defendant in such a lawsuit, the survey results showed.