Annals of emergency medicine
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As of March 1994, 45 states had laws that, to varying extents, required health practitioners to report cases of domestic violence (DV). Colorado passed a mandatory DV reporting law in 1995. Laws that mandate police involvement in cases of DV injuries have been criticized because of concerns that these laws deter victims from seeking medical care. We hypothesized that these laws would deter DV victims from seeking medical care. ⋯ Only rarely did mandatory reporting laws appear to adversely affect a patient's decisions to seek medical care in this study. The benefits of mandatory reporting must be measured to assure that they justify deterrence to a small minority of patients.