Manufactured Clinical Risk: Why Better Decisions Matter More Than Faster Investigations

Abstract

Accurate emergency care depends not only on selecting appropriate investigations and treatments, but also on recognising when they are unnecessary. This article introduces Manufactured Clinical Risk (MCR), a cognitive phenomenon in which non-instrumental information generated by low-utility investigations is reinterpreted as genuine clinical risk and incorporated into subsequent decision making. MCR is proposed as the predictable consequence of relief-based decision making, whereby clinicians seek relief from uncertainty rather than rational assessment of clinical probability. Once established, MCR initiates ambiguity cascades that generate further investigations, referrals, admissions and treatments despite little meaningful change in the patient's underlying probability of disease. This framework provides a plausible explanation for why strategies that accelerate clinical activity do not always produce proportional improvements in emergency department performance. Improving threshold-based decision making may represent an alternative model of performance improvement by safely reducing unnecessary clinical activity before it occurs.