PHILADELPHIA, PA July 7, 2004 - The medical malpractice crisis gripping Pennsylvania has sown widespread discontent among doctors in high-risk specialties, affecting the quality of health care their patients receive, according to a new study released today by The Project on Medical Liability in Pennsylvania and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Physician satisfaction is often neglected or discounted as self-serving in policy debates,” the authors say. “In this paper we outline a framework for understanding why physician satisfaction matters for patient care and what factors influence it. Professional dissatisfaction deserves policy attention if it has damaging consequences for patients.” Nearly 40 percent of Pennsylvania high-risk specialists surveyed in 2003 were dissatisfied with the practice of medicine, twice as high as the national rate in 1999.
But dissatisfied physicians have been linked to riskier prescribing practices or engaging in “defensive medicine” when treating patients.”Our findings suggest that the malpractice crisis in Pennsylvania is decreasing specialist physicians’ satisfaction with medical practice in ways that may affect the quality of care. The relationship may be cumulative, with an acute malpractice crisis acting as a ‘last straw’ among the physicians who are most affected by it,” the report’s authors conclude.
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