Aug 7 2010
MedPage Today/ABC News: According to a new survey by the American Medical Association, more than 60 percent of doctors older than 55 have been sued for medical malpractice. "Although most of those claims are dropped or dismissed, the new survey from the AMA shows that most physicians will be sued for malpractice at some point in their careers. This works out to an average of 95 medical malpractice lawsuits having been filed for every 100 physicians now in practice, according to the association." The AMA surveyed 5,825 doctors for its survey. "While physicians are likely to be subject to a lawsuit at some point in their careers, only about 5 percent of physicians are sued in any given year, the report found. … The average defense costs between $22,000 for dropped or dismissed claims, to more than $100,000 for cases that go to trial, according to data in the report from the Physician Insurers Association of America" (Walker, 8/5).
 This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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