Adjusting Physician Payment for Malpractice Risk

Troyen A. Brennan, Alison J. Eastwood, Joseph P. Newhouse

ResearchPublished 1993

In this report the authors define aggregations of Current Procedure Terminology (CPT) codes for the purpose of testing whether the risk of a malpractice claim varies by procedure. Using a data set of claims from one large teaching hospital from the 1985-1990 period, the authors show that malpractice risk differs not only by specialty but also by whether the procedure is invasive. Although the authors’ estimates are necessarily imprecise, they suggest an order-of-magnitude difference in the risk of a claim according to the invasiveness of the procedure within specialty. Medicare reimbursement policy only recognizes between-specialty variance in malpractice risk but not within-specialty variance according to invasiveness. The authors suggest it should.

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  • Copyright: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Available
  • Year: 1993
  • Print Format: Paperback
  • Paperback Pages: 41
  • Paperback Price: $23.00
  • Paperback ISBN/EAN: 978-0-8330-1404-7
  • Document Number: MR-272-HCFA

Citation

RAND Style Manual
Brennan, Troyen A., Alison J. Eastwood, and Joseph P. Newhouse, Adjusting Physician Payment for Malpractice Risk, RAND Corporation, MR-272-HCFA, 1993. As of September 20, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR272.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Brennan, Troyen A., Alison J. Eastwood, and Joseph P. Newhouse, Adjusting Physician Payment for Malpractice Risk. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1993. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR272.html. Also available in print form.
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