Outcomes of Medical-Malpractice Litigation

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Abstract
The Harvard Medical Practice Study is responsible for the widely cited extrapolation implying that America's doctors “kill 80,000 patients a year,”1,2 and the study authors have previously asserted that there are, if anything, too few rather than too many malpractice suits filed in the United States.1 Brennan et al. (Dec. 26 issue)3 report that the severity of the patient's disability, not the presence or absence of negligence, predicted the outcome of the medical-malpractice claims they identified. This is a remarkable finding, considering that each year our tort system generates approximately one suit for every 2.5 obstetricians, neurosurgeons, and orthopedists and nearly one suit for every 5 physicians overall.

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