Medical Malpractice Rates: Don’t Believe the Hype
The “tort reform” crowd would have us believe that medical negligence is almost nonexistent, but that medical malpractice insurance premiums are skyrocketing and driving physicians out of business due to “frivolous” lawsuits. Here are some facts. A study by HealthGrades reported that medical negligence in hospitals kills about 195,000 Americans per year. To put this in perspective, rifles kill about 323 and drunk drivers kill about 10,076 Americans per year.
Medical malpractice insurance premiums are NOT skyrocketing. Indeed, according to an annual premium survey released this week by the Medical Liability Monitor (MLM), medical malpractice insurance rates had a 7 -year run of decreasing and remained essentially flat in 2015. The co-author of the MLM report, Paul Greve suggested that one has to go back 15 years to see anything close to a crisis with significant rate increases. He stated that rates are “about as favorable as they’ve been in the last 40 years.”
Medical malpractice cases are extremely hard to win. According to a 2006 New England Journal of Medicine study, of the medical negligence cases that make it to court, plaintiffs lose 89% of the time. Moreover, in many states such as Virginia, medical malpractice verdicts are capped. This means that a verdict based upon a medical error resulting in catastrophic injuries, which may require millions of dollars in lifetime medical care, will be reduced down to the statutory cap by the court. Today, a birth injury case resulting in a $10 million verdict, would be reduced by a Virginia trial judge down to approximately $2 million. Given these hard facts, no rational medical malpractice attorney would file a “frivolous” medical malpractice lawsuit. It’s hard enough to win the good ones.
If you or a loved one was a victim of medical negligence, you need an elite medical malpractice attorney. In 2014, Jonathan Petty was named the best medical malpractice plaintiffs attorney in Richmond.
Since 2004, Jonathan Petty has applied the deep knowledge and experience he gained working on the defense side of litigation to represent ordinary people injured by car accidents and truck accidents, medical malpractice, and defective products in Virginia. He has successfully tried medical malpractice and personal injury cases to verdict in courts throughout Virginia, and he has handled cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants in state and federal courts across the country.