18 words in medical records that restore principles in a medical malpractice lawsuit

KevinMD November 29, 2024
Howard Smith, MD

There are 85,000 medical malpractice lawsuits filed per year. There are 1 million physicians. Therefore, your odds as a doctor for being sued for malpractice are 8.5 percent per year, which corresponds to one lawsuit every 12 years. To make matters worse, two-thirds of lawsuits have questionable merit.

A malpractice lawsuit is inevitable because a complication is inevitable. It just takes one complication. The problem arises when a complication is a random error of nature rather than a definite medical error. Your patient is still an unfortunate victim and can easily misconstrue an error of nature as a medical error and hold you, the physician, responsible for something that is completely out of your control.

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