Malpractice Litigation

Medical malpractice is defined as treatment by a health care professional that does not meet the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient. Negligent medical outcomes are the basis for medical malpractice litigation. Most medical malpractice cases involve errors, and the most frequent source of error is communication, either among team members or between the physician, patient, and family members.

In a comprehensive study of malpractice, investigators who reviewed records of all hospitalizations in the state of New York found that 1 percent of patients experienced adverse outcomes due to negligence. Given these findings, one out of every 100 patients in the state of New York could have sued for medical malpractice at the time of the study. The investigators also calculated the number of patients who did sue for medical malpractice and found that only a tiny proportion (fewer than 2 percent) of those who were eligible actually did.

Given the universe of patients and families who could have sued for medical malpractice, and the small percentage that did, raises the intriguing question of trying to identify the factors that explain the differences between two groups, both of whom experienced the same type of negligent outcome. Researchers have explored the relationship between malpractice claims history and the technical quality of care delivered. No meaningful differences were found between physicians with claims against them and those with no claims in either quality of care or chart documentation. Other attempts to identify psychological, personality, geographic, class, or educational variables that distinguish physicians or patients who become involved in medical malpractice suits have had inconsistent results. The one characteristic that has been shown to relate to the propensity [Page 788]to sue is age. Older patients are less likely to sue than younger ones. With the exception of age, none of the traditional sociological variables have been found to relate to the propensity to sue in the face of a negligent outcome.