I decided to take a look at the top types of injuries claimed in medical malpractice cases submitted to LegalMatch.com in the past 12 months. Here is what I found:
- Possibility of future harm: 34%
- Long term or permanent loss of physical ability: 29%
- Short term loss of physical ability: 15%
- Disfigurement or cosmetic injury: 13%
- Minor injury: 6%
- No injury: 3%
More than half of the above claims are potential cases of doctor discipline if the claims are taken at face value. This means that in addition to a malpractice claim, the doctor can be subject to punishment by medical licensing boards.
Unfortunately, the stunning reality is that hardly any of the medical malpractice claims won by plaintiffs will result in doctor discipline. According to a study by Public Citizens Health Research Group, of all the medical malpractice payouts between 1990 and 2004, only 5.4% of doctors were subject to discipline. Even worse, of those doctors who had three or more medical malpractice payouts to plaintiffs, only 11.4% were disciplined.
Why does that matter? Malpractice cases cost everyone money. They raise rates and they clog the tort system. If more doctors were subject to discipline for their negligence in addition to monetary sanctions, perhaps we would see less malpractice lawsuits? It would be a double whammy for doctors; they might take discipline more seriously and they might not be able to continue to practice if their negligence is brought before the proper authorities.
In fact, maybe we can get rid of malpractice lawsuits altogether? Establish some sort of board that can not only discipline doctors but extract compensation from them, or from some general client fund (such as those run by many state bars to compensate clients, like in California).
Certainly all the categories listed above face an uphill climb to get any compensation for the simple reason that litigating malpractice claims is costly. The big winners in our current malpractice system are not patients or the medical profession-they are (surprise surprise) the lawyers. Let’s change the equation and make this about good health and good medicine, not making money.