Another Indictment of Malpractice
A large majority of malpractice claims do not lead to any payment from a doctor to a patient. Either the patient drops the case, or a court dismisses it. The study finds:
In every medical specialty the researchers studied, at least three out of four claims led to no payment. In many specialties, about 9 out of 10 claims led to no payment.
Over all, about 7 percent of doctors faced a claim in a given year, and fewer than 2 percent made any payment relating to a claim.
Very interesting numbers, good post
John, we should get rid of the whole sytem and replace it with the no fault sytem you have described.
Like medical care, justice is to an unconscionable extent rationed by waiting.
Awful system. Needs replacing.
Texas is implementing a new provision that allows the judge to require the plaintiff to pay the defendant’s legal bills if the case was dismissed without merit or if the judgment is within some small amount of an earlier settlement offer.
So much of malpractice is dependent on the patient’s ability to successfully sway a judge or jury. There’s no way a system like that can be fair.
Several questions are left unanswered.
Why are malpractice insurance premiums high if so few win and the expected mean and median payments are not high when averaged over all doctors in the specialty? If insurance premiums are not high, who cares if patients sue for malpractice?
If malpractice suits are causing doctors to be cautious, order more tests, and increase consumer medical costs, there is a chicken and egg problem. Are more tests leading to fewer won claims or are the more tests unnecessary? Without the extra consumer medical costs there would probably be more patient claim wins and the costs saved from fewer medical tests would increase doctor malpractice medical insurance premiums. Capping or banning malpractice claims would benefit doctors at the expense of harmed patients. It is a simple Coasean problem of social costs.
Why do patients sue if recovery chances are low and payments (especially after legal fees and court fees) are not especially high?
You don’t fix a leak in the house by patching the ceiling. You patch the roof.
The same is true for malpractice lawsuits. Whatever is causing patients to sue doctors will not go away by tinkering with patients’ legal rights to sue. The real culprits are the doctors who are sued and what they did to cause the lawsuit. If patients cannot sue, they will find other avenues to address their grievances.