After malpractice caps, doctors ordered fewer invasive tests to diagnose heart attacks
One factor can sway a doctor’s behavior when diagnosing a heart attack: whether the state has a law capping malpractice damages.
A patient comes into a hospital emergency department, troubled by chest pain that comes and goes. The doctor asks some questions, draws on clinical experience, and orders a test to rule out — or in — a heart attack.
That test could be a stress test that tracks the patient with an electrocardiogram while running on a treadmill. Or it could be a more specific but also more invasive test: an angiography that
