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Medical Malpractice

Professional negligence by a health care provider has implications for both the health and legal professions: Preventable medical injuries increase the overall cost of treatment, while malpractice lawsuits have been blamed for further increasing the cost of health care in the United States. RAND researchers have examined medical malpractice legislation and its effects on stakeholders such as the health care consumer, the medical practitioner, and the legal community.

Journal Article
Too Many Alerts, Too Much Liability: Sorting Through the Malpractice Implications of Drug-Drug Interaction Clinical Decision Support
New electronic clinical decision support (CDS) systems are intended to reduce medical errors but sometimes have the unexpected and perverse effect of overwhelming physicians with potential warnings about trivial events, particularly regarding drug-drug interactions.
Jun 1, 2012
Journal Article
Outcomes of Medical Malpractice Litigation Against US Physicians
The risk of medical malpractice varies substantially according to physician specialty.
Jun 1, 2012
Research Brief
Most Physicians Will Face Malpractice Claims, But Risk of Making Payment Is Low
The most comprehensive analysis of the risk of malpractice claims by physician specialty in more than two decades finds that U.S. physicians have a greater than 75% career-long risk of facing litigation. In some specialties, doctors can be virtually certain of a lawsuit over the course of their careers. However, the vast majority of those claims will not result in payment to a plaintiff.
Sep 14, 2011
Journal Article
Malpractice Risk According to Physician Specialty
The likelihood of malpractice suits and the size of indemnity payments vary across specialties, but by age 65, 75% of physicians in low-risk specialties had faced a malpractice claim, as compared with 99% of physicians in high-risk specialties.
Aug 18, 2011
Commentary
Clinical Decision Support and Malpractice Risk
From the standpoint of policy makers, the basic challenge is to ensure that liability concerns do not derail the clinical value of new CDS technology, write Michael Greenberg and M. Susan Ridgely.
Jul 6, 2011
Journal Article
Clinical Decision Support and Malpractice Risk
Clinical decision support (CDS) refers to electronic technology used to enhance clinical decision making. The basic challenge for policymakers interested in promoting adoption of CDS is to ensure that liability concerns do not derail the clinical value of new CDS technology.
Jul 1, 2011
News Release
Better Patient Safety Linked to Fewer Medical Malpractice Claims in California
Reducing the number of preventable patient injuries in California hospitals from 2001 to 2005 was associated with a corresponding drop in malpractice claims against physicians.
Apr 15, 2010
Research Brief
Does Improved Patient Safety Reduce Malpractice Litigation?
Investigates the relationship between safety outcomes in hospitals and malpractice claiming against providers, using data for California hospitals and insurers from 2001 through 2005.
Apr 7, 2010
Report
Better Patient Safety Linked to Fewer Medical Malpractice Claims in California
Reducing the number of preventable patient injuries in California hospitals from 2001 to 2005 was associated with a corresponding drop in malpractice claims against physicians.
Mar 26, 2010
Research Brief
Diagnostic Abuse in Silica Litigation
This brief analyzes the factors that led to the exposure of widespread abuse in the diagnoses in thousands of silica injury claims in Texas, then suggests ways to uncover such abuses in mass personal-injury litigation more easily in the future.
Dec 4, 2009
Report
The Abuse of Medical Diagnostic Practices in Mass Litigation: The Case of Silica
Silica inhalation injury claims skyrocketed beginning in 2001, prompting concerns that silicia litigation would become a mass tort. It instead collapsed following the uncovering of abusive diagnostic practices, which can be decreased or even prevented if changes in several areas of litigation procedures are pursued.
Nov 13, 2009
Report
Change Medical Liability Laws to Reduce the Frequency and Severity of Claims
This document explores how changing medical liability laws to reduce the frequency and severity of claims would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
Oct 12, 2009
Research Brief
Room for improvement: Strong patient safety systems could limit health, social and economic harms from medical error
RAND Europe reviewed the problem of patient harm in Europe, assessed expected effects of three policy action areas to improve safety and modelled the potential health benefits that could be achieved by reducing numbers of harmful events.
Sep 22, 2009
Journal Article
The Welfare Effects of Medical Malpractice Liability
The authors use variation in the generosity of local juries to identify the causal impact of malpractice liability on medical costs, mortality, and social welfare.
Jan 1, 2009
Journal Article
Do Non-Economic Damages Caps and Attorney Fee Limits Reduce Access to Justice for Victims of Medical Negligence?
Analyzes effects of noneconomic damages caps and attorney fee limits on the ability of people injured by negligent physicians to retain qualified lawyers to represent them
Dec 31, 2008
Research Brief
Do Policies That Target Physicians Who Make Medical Malpractice Payments Reduce Negligent Injuries?
This fact sheet describes a study that found that policies targeting physicians' medical malpractice payment histories as a way to deter medical malpractice are ineffective, mainly because paying physicians are not the negligent ones.
Aug 23, 2007
Journal Article
Reducing Medical Malpractice By Targeting Physicians Making Medical Malpractice Payments
Some states use physicians' histories of medical malpractice payments to try to reduce the incidence of medical malpractice (and for other reasons).
Mar 1, 2007
Journal Article
Identifying Malpractice-Prone Physicians
Easily gathered physician characteristics can be helpful in designing targeted quality of care improvement policies.
Mar 1, 2007
News Release
RAND Study Finds California Medical Malpractice Award Caps Have Cut Payments By 30 Percent to Those Those Who Win ...
A landmark California law that caps non-economic awards in medical malpractice trials has cut defendants' payments from jury verdicts by 30 percent.
Jul 12, 2004
Research Brief
Changing the Medical Malpractice Dispute Process: What Have We Learned from California's MICRA?
This report examines the effects of California's Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) on litigants in actual trials.
Jan 1, 2004

Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Travis Hubble

Ph.D. Student, Pardee RAND Graduate School, and Assistant Policy Researcher, RAND

Travis Hubble is a Ph.D. student in the Research, Analysis, and Design stream at Pardee RAND Graduate School and an assistant policy analyst at RAND. He has a J.D. and an M.A. in philosophy from Boston University and a B.A. from Brigham Young University. Prior to coming to RAND he served in the…
Eric Helland

Adjunct Economist

Eric Helland is an adjunct economist at the RAND Corporation, in the Institute for Civil Justice, and the William F. Podlich Professor of Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of over 50 books and articles on topics in law and economics ranging…

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