Health Law

Study Shows Medical Malpractice Suits Not Getting Enough Attention

Recent reports claim that contrary to the assertions of those stating that the United States is in need for medical malpractice reform, the biggest crisis we may be facing as a country related to medical malpractice is not an epidemic of minor lawsuits. Instead, the real issue at hand may just be that the medical care available to most is far from good; hence, the lawsuits claiming negligence against so many hospital and their staff. 
 
Statistics show that ppreventable medical errors, like birth injuries, are currently the nation's sixth leading cause of death (as stated by the Institute for Medicine). In conclusion to their findings, the IOM believes that medical errors may be causing more than 98,000 deaths each year in the U.S.

Research Analyzes Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
 
In 2006, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital recently analyzed 1,452 medical malpractice lawsuits. They reportedly found that more than 90 percent of these malpractice lawsuits were filed showing clear evidence of physical injury. In many cases these injuries were severe resulting in cerebral palsy and even death. Reportedly, in 63 percent of the cases, the injury was the result of a mistake by the doctor.

As the current health system is set up, the compensation received by patients whoa re injured varies greatly depending on the validity of their claims and severity of their injuries. Although most patients who are injured due to medical malpractice do not take legal action. This alarming study also revealed that when baseless medical malpractice suits were filed, the courts typically threw them out before trial. Two-hundred, thirty-six cases were thrown out of court even though they carried strong evidence of personal injury due to physician error.

Full post as published by Cerebral Palsy Law Blog on October 29, 2009 (boomark / email).