Loading...
Malpractice risk appears to be related not to patient characteristics, complexity of illness, or physician's technical competence, but to patients' dissatisfaction with their physicians' communication skills, ability to develop rapport, limitations on access, and delivery of care that does not meet their expectations. These authors performed a retrospective, longitudinal cohort study of 645 physicians in a medical group from a large teaching center to assess the association between patient complaints and malpractice risk.
Emergency physicians, radiologists, pathologists, anesthesiologists, and residents were excluded. The mean number of complaints per physician during the 75 months of study was 7.9; surgeons generated significantly more comp…