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The American College of Physicians is creating guidelines to control overtesting and overtreatment. They estimate we spend $250 billion in unnecessary tests every year. Some of the reason is that MDs feel they need to practice defensive medicine, but there are also conflicts of interest related to investments they have made in purchasing medical testing equipment....

A new survey of orthopedics surgeons showed roughly a third of the imaging tests they ordered, such as X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, are meant to protect them from lawsuits rather than for the benefit of the patient.  Defensive medicine, where physicians order diagnostic tests of little benefit largely to protect themselves from lawsuits, are up as high as...

ER physicians are at particular risk for law suits and they tend to over-test people to protect them from making diagnostic errors; they don't know these patients. As a result this drives up the cost for health care.    

According to an article out of the Univerity of Michigan Medical Center that was published in March of 2014 in the journal, Internal Medicine, we spend about a billion dollars a year for unnecessary brain scans (MRIs and CT scans) on people who have headaches. Their research showed that the incidence of brain tumors, brain aneurysms, and AV malformations...

  The Institute of Medicine (IOM) reviewed data about possible environmental risks for developing breast cancer. They felt that pesticides, beauty products, heousehold chemicals, and plastics might or might not be risk factors for breasts cancer. They did agree that medical x-rays were a clear risk for developing breast cancer. They recommended that...

  You can't really blame MDs for practicing defensively when they are trying to do the best job they possibly can for their patients and they don't want to be involved in a malpractice case if they make an error. In a study of 1200 orthopedic surgeons 96% admitted practicing defensively. This came to an estimated $2 billion cost annually. Many...

  Defensive medicine leads to ordering too many tests that are often costly and potentially dangerous. It leads to skyrocketing insurance premiums but it tends to protect physicians from malpractice suits. What is needed is a more personal relationship between physicians and patients that includes patients in the decision-making process in assessment...