How often does medical malpractice occur?

Finding reliable statistics on negligent medical treatment is difficult, due to the fact that most cases of medical malpractice go unnoticed and unreported. However, it is safe to assume that any one patient is going to receive medical care as required by the accepted standard of care.

Since medical malpractice statistics are relatively scarce, I cannot give you  very much on trends regarding the growth or decline of medical malpractice over time, however, here are some recent numbers that will give you an estimate of the relative frequency with which medical malpractice occurs.

Medical Malpractice by the Numbers

Number of Medical Malpractice Claims Filed

• 1995: 90,212
• 1996: 84,741
• 1997: 85,613
• 1998: 86,211
• 1999: 89,311
• 2000: 86,480

Rate of Negligence in Hospitals

About 1% of hospital patients will experience medical negligence.

Disciplinary Action Against Doctors

Roughly 0.5% of Doctors will receive and form of State Sanction or Disciplinary Action.

Average Medical Malpractice Award

As of recently, the average jury awarded verdict approaches $4.7 Million

Medicine as a Profession

Although the numbers are low, medical malpractice cases are still far too frequent for a field defining itself by the preservation of life. Doctors, nurses and other medical professionals are charged with the duty of maintaining the health of their patients, and mistakes or poor judgement carries far too high a price to be allowed.

Medical Malpractice Tort Reform

Although there has been a push to reform the tort laws with regards to medical malpractice award amounts, specifically to limit the amount of money awarded to plaintiffs, it seems the necessary, albeit more difficult problem to solve is medical malpractice itself.

It is likely that the pursuit of profit by medical insurance companies has been the driver of understaffed hospitals and overworked medical professionals. Could this be contributing to the occurrence of medical negligence and patient injury? While the numbers are not available, it seems a logical assumption that doctors who are treating more patients than they can properly manage are more likely to make an error in judgment and cause undue harm to the patients they are charged with treating.

The push for medical malpractice tort reform as a measure to reduce health care costs is driven by the very companies who profit from the cost of medical care. Until reliable, unbiased numbers are published, tort reform will continue to be a state-by-state "guestimate" with regards to it's necessity.