Medical Malpractice Statistics
We all put our trust in doctors and surgeons to keep us fit and healthy and to heal us when our health takes a turn for the worse. When we are let down by our doctors, and as a result our health suffers or someone get injured or dies through their actions or inactions, we need to have access to some form and redress and perhaps compensation. The “vehicle” that provides this redress is the filing of a malpractice suit.
Many doctors prefer to settle cases out of court rather than having their name and reputation dragged into an open arena with all of the adverse and harmful publicity that a malpractice suit would bring to their business. For this reason all doctors are covered by malpractice insurance. To prove how often this course of action is taken, medical malpractice statistics show that 9 out of every 10 never get to the courtroom.
Although the figure of 100,000 malpractice suits being filed each year may sound a lot, less than one half of one percent of the US practicing doctor population face disciplinary action. In real terms this mean that less than 2,700 disciplinary judgments are enacted according to medical malpractice statistics.
This number of malpractice convictions is pitifully small when compared to the 98,000 patients that actually died in hospitals across the US, and whose deaths were attributed to some form of medical error. This fatality figure is in relation to a recent study undertaken by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is part of the nation’s overall medical malpractice statistics.
Research undertaken by Harvard University in 1984 recorded that 1% of patients that underwent treatment in New York’s hospitals were injured, and that of this 1%, one quarter actually died. If you extrapolated this statistic across the whole of the US, it showed that over 234,000 patients would have been injured, resulting in over 80,000 fatalities.
These figures, obtained from medical malpractice statistics, clearly show that we are talking about large numbers of people, and that the trend is on the increase.
The figures could suggest that with so many hospital deaths and injuries being recorded, but so few malpractice cases being proven, whilst medical costs have risen but malpractice insurance costs rise only disproportionately, that doctors are becoming complacent with the number of malpractice suits being filed against them as opposed to such a high incidence of recorded sub-standard care.
Based on these latest medical malpractice statistics, it would appear that the system is in need of a bit of a shake-up and that patient care needs to be taken a lot more seriously. What price would you care to put on human life and well being?
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