This is a patient of whom I have direct knowledge. This patient has had the following studies done in the last year without findings of a real medical problem. The patient complains of chest pain.

Over 60 ER visits
20 hospitalizations
5 cardiac catheterizations
over 50 chest x-rays
5 CT scans of the chest
4 CTscans of the abdomen
4 nuclear medicine cardiac stress tests

The expense of defensive medicine is real. This is only one patient in one hospital in the U.S. Imagine the impact economically if every hospital in America has just one patient like this. Most hospitals have many of these patients. Tort reform is critical to the success of any plan to reform the U.S. health care system. Without tort reform, defensive medicine will continue to drive up the costs of healthcare.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.