Harvard study on Medical Malpractice Litigation published in the New England Journal of Medicine
The Harvard study on Medical Malpractice Litigation published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week appears to be a generally well drawn analysis. Physicians reviewed over 1,400 past malpractice claims from insurance company records to determine whether, in the reviewing physicians' opinion, an error occurred and/or an injury resulted. Then, they compared their own conclusions to whether the case resulted in a payment or no payment (they did not compare the amount of payment).
In the vast majority of the cases, the reviewing physicians agreed with the result of the case. In most of the cases the physicians disagreed with, the physicians felt that a payment should have been paid to a victim of medical negligence, but the case did not result in a payment.
Read more about the results on the physicians' resource, MedPage Today, which acknowledged that:
Frivolous lawsuits are not a major contributor to rising malpractice insurance costs nor does frivolous litigation clog the court system, according to investigators here.