Table 4.

Impact of medical malpractice-related factors on providers’ decision about whether to include obstetrics in practice

Factors	Obstetrician-Gynecologists (n=330)	Family Physicians (n=416)	Nurse-Midwives (n=153)	P value*
Risk of malpractice litigation (%)				<0.01
High impact	37.5	51.2	21.7
Moderate impact	25.2	19.1	27.6
Small impact	25.2	14.0	33.6
No impact	8.0	6.0	11.8
Not applicable	4.1	9.7	5.3
Medical liability insurance premiums/difficulty in obtaining liability insurance (%)				<0.01
High impact	29.8	36.9	15.3
Moderate impact	16.9	17.8	10.0
Small impact	21.9	19.1	21.3
No impact	22.5	14.7	32.7
Not applicable	8.9	11.4	20.7
Difficulty in obtaining back-up coverage (%)				<0.01
High impact	14.5	24.8	19.2
Moderate impact	13.4	16.8	13.2
Small impact	23.3	19.8	11.9
No impact	33.5	24.2	30.5
Not applicable	15.3	14.4	25.2
Credentialing barriers (%)				<0.01
High impact	3.2	10.4	9.4
Moderate impact	3.5	12.3	12.1
Small impact	15.1	25.0	16.8
No impact	48.8	33.0	37.6
Not applicable	29.4	19.3	24.2

Percentages may not add up to exactly 100% due to rounding. Less than 4.5% of the respondents had missing data for each of the variables.

^*Chi-square tests for differences across specialties were conducted without the “Not applicable” category.