The Medical Malpractice Myth

As we mentioned in our most recent blog post, the Center for Democracy and Justice has published an authoritative study of medical malpractice and related issues. One of the issues studied concerned the state of medical malpractice claims in the United States. What they found reveals that there are by far more incidents of medical malpractice than actual medical malpractice lawsuits. Here is what they found, “There are far more cases of medical malpractice than medical malpractice litigation. Professor Danzon reported that there were 10 incidents of medical malpractice for every one malpractice claim in the United States. The Harvard Team looked at about 30,000 hospital records in New York and found conclusive evidence of a serious injury from medical malpractice in the records of 280 patients. How many of those 280 patients brought a claim? Eight. That is less than 3 percent.”
This is just one of many studies that reveal the medical malpractice crisis in this country has nothing to do with medical malpractice lawsuits. Rather, the crisis is to be found in the prevalence of medical malpractice.