Does patient behaviour drive physicians to practice defensive medicine? Evidence from a video experiment

OBJECTIVE: By manipulating patients’ critical attitude in a video experiment, we examined whether physicians are more intended to perform defensive acts because of a higher perceived liability risk in Belgium. METHODS: We assigned 85 practicing gynaecologists/obstetricians and orthopaedists randomly to four hypothetical video consultations, in which the patients show either a critical attitude (i.e., getting ahead of the facts, showing distrust) or a non-critical attitude (i.e., displaying more neutral questions and expressions). We asked the physicians about the care they would administer in the presented cases and the expected likelihood that the patient would sue the physician in case of a medical incident. RESULTS: By manipulating patients’ verbal critical attitude (which indicates patients’ intention to take further steps), while keeping constant physician’s communication, patients’ clinical situation, preferences, and non-verbal behaviour in the videos, we were able to discover differential treatment styles driven by physicians’ perceived liability risk among patients with a different critical attitude. We found that physicians perform 17 percentage points more defensive acts (e.g., surgeries and diagnostic tests that are not medically necessary) when experiencing a high liability risk. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that patients’ critical attitude drives physicians’ perceived liability risk and consequent defensive behaviour among obstetricians/gynaecologists and orthopaedists. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13561-023-00458-3.