The American Medical Association released a report surveying over 5,000 doctors between 2007 and 2008. The result: An average of 95 claims were filed for every 100 physicians. That’s an average of almost one per physicians. Just under 50 percent were sued at some point in their career. 20% were sued two or more times.
And the doctor’s specialty determined the career suit rate:
General and family practice: 80 claims / 100 physicians
General internal medicine: 58 claims / 100 physicians
Internal medicine subspecialties: 86 claims / 100 physicians
General surgery: 213 claims / 100 physicians
Surgical subspecialties: 170 claims / 100 physicians
Ob/Gyn: 215 claims / 100 physicians
Radiology: 116 claims / 100 physicians
ER Medicine: 109 claims / 100 physicians
The longer you practice, the more likely you will have been sued over your career.
Those aged 55 or older: 60.5% of doctors have been sued
Those aged 40-54: 45.3% of doctors have been sued
Practice long enough and you will receive a summons. Data from the Physician Insurers Association of America (PIAA, 2009) suggest the following about those characteristics of the medical liability market in 2008: In under 30% of the cases, money was paid to plaintiff. Put a different way, no money was paid out over 70% of the time. Many are being sued, but the system fails in efficiently identifying those patients who deserve a timely settlement.
In the first place, these numbers are seriously suspect, coming as they do from a key player in the business of medicine, with a major stake in the volume they purport to be true.
In the second place, the mitigating circumstances are statisically off the chart, and profoundly important to the wellbeing of society as a whole. And a few of those factors are these:
1. 500 citizens die while being medically treated, every day of the year. You didn’t hear THAT during the 2-year Health Care Reform chatter, did you?
2. The Nat’l Practitioner Data Bank holds files on 237,000 physicians, considered “Dangerous” or “Questionable.” From murder to child molestation, from rape to drug running to insurance theft, almost exactly 50 doctors are found guilty of agregious misbehavior each week.
3. It is doctors – and no one else in society – who gleefully overprescribe the mind-numbing volume of drugs to the masses, at an ever-increasing rate (Does it concern anyone at all that fully 30% of all Girl Scouts at summer camp are on prescription drugs? Is there any doubt it will rise to 50% at some point in the future?)
4. The watchdog group Public Citizen reports that ‘Med Mal’ lawsuits are, in fact, few & far between. Fewer than 10% of all patients harmed by medical treatment ever bring suit at all. In those cases that are brought to trial, far more than half are won by the physician. Contrary to popular belief, juries tend to side with the medical care provider, unless the injury is practically undisputed. And anyone who thinks it’s a piece of cake to convince an attorney to take on a Med Mal case, well, they just aren’t paying attention.
5. Because of the ‘monster’ million-dollar suits that DO make the headlines, Americans typically suppose these victims are raking in tons of money on zillions of kooky cases. But factually, very, very few patient victories result in much at all.
I am by no means proud of the fact that I live in a country considered “lawsuit crazy” by the rest of the world. But I can say with some confidence that American medical practitioners have brought this plague on themselves.
All by themselves? The lawsuit industry doesn’t just prey on physicians but on anyone with a pocket, and not just a deep one. Personal injury lawyers will accept cases that they think they can win. Period. Slip and fall injuries, plane manufacturers sued after the pilot ran out of gas and crashed, bizarre drug reactions, hurt feelings, you name it. There is no end to the laundry list of potential complaints which feed the industry. American medical practitioners certainly didn’t create all of that. Sure, the health care professions comprise a cross-section of society and there will inevitably be bad apples but the vast majority are highly qualified and ethical, and I don’t know of another field which is more intensely-regulated than health care. To paint the entire field with your broad brush of incompetence is more suspect than the data. You didn’t mention whether the 500 daily deaths in the US include patients who were receiving emergency care or who were undergoing treatment for already-life-threatening conditions or whether they are directly attributable to malpractice. And yes, I agree that our society is over-medicated. However, just as health care providers are taking steps along with law enforcement to reduce such abuses as doctor-shopping they are now being told that a new darling of the trial bar is litigation for UNDER-MEDICATING patients who claim that their pain has not been sufficiently relieved. The perfect complaint–one that is almost totally subjective. And last, you seem to believe that a victory for the defense in a malpractice case means that the provider is unscathed. Whether or not the jury awards money to the plaintiff, malpractice complaints are incredibly stressful to the provider and have a pronounced effect on his/her attitude toward patients. Defensive practice is real and does contribute to health care costs, no matter what the American Bar Association claims.
J.Crowder –
Excellent comments and I do not dispute a single one of your observations.
There should be nothing in my commentary, however, to imply that I believe medical care is responsible for, as you say, the “lawsuit industry.” Of course this rapacious man-made creature feeds on anything that wiggles, and health care practitioners had nothing – that I can determine – to do with it’s spawning.
What health care HAS done is provide a marvelous garden for the care & nurture of this breed of insect, and as a result, must – to a very measurable extent – acknowledge responsibility, for contributing to its insideous ability to metastasize.
Are insurance premiums for the typical physician outrageous? Of course they are.
Are far to many decent doctors affected in negative ways by what this all has become? Unquestionably.
But I submit that by tacit acceptance of allowing thousands of their unethical and/or incompetent peers to function unabated, the overwhelming number of “good” doctors in this country have done themselves a grave injustice. For 150 years, they’ve taken the tack of turning a blind eye toward the cancer in their midst.
If YOU were the CEO of a major insurance player covering physicians, where exactly would you care to see the premium bar set? Be sure to keep in mind the outrageous volume of criminally unnecessary surgeries performed. (One New York MD admitted in court that, yes, he really had performed 10,000 unwarranted eye surgeries)
How would you factor profit & loss, knowing that 2,500 MDs are convicted of crimes every year – for Patient Assault, Fake Botox, Deliberate Mis-Coding; Pharmaceutical drug running, Medical Fraud & Child Molestation?
The sad fact is, Medicine has created it’s own target-rich environment for crappy behavior.
And the Premium Boogey Man knows it.