A study by RAND Corp. researchers published in October 2014 in the "New England Journal of Medicine" concluded that laws restricting medical-malpractice suits do not reduce the amount of "defensive medicine" or reduce health-care costs. The researchers, led by Daniel A. Waxman, examined 3.8 million Medicare patient records from hospital emergency departments from 1997 to 2011, comparing care in three states that enacted strict malpractice reform laws about a decade earlier (Georgia, Texas and South Carolina) to care in neighboring states that did not enact such laws. The study found that the laws had no effect on whether doctors ordered resource-intensive care (e.g., CT or MRI scans and hospitalization).