Study On Malpractice Payouts.

[SirNitram]

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The summary: Activity has dropped since 2001. The system is working the vast majority of the time.

The study goes up to 2005, but the trends are blindingly obvious via the graphs: There's been no signifigant upward trend. There was a mild uptick in 2001 with settlements but actual judgements rendered has not increased. That uptick also dropped back down.

The total payouts.. 2.1B to 4.2B.. May seem a drastic leap, but adjusted for inflation it's a change of only 2.1B to 2.3B. Similarly, the average jury payouts have moved only from 125K to 146K when adjusted for inflation. There was a very strange leap(Uptick doesn't do it justice) in 1996, peaking at 200K inflation adjusted, but that dropped back down the next year.

'Multimillion' payouts have careened from 2.25% to 1.0% of the total proportion. Yes, a drop of 56%.

The rest discusses trends in specific types of medicine, the increase in payouts for entirely preventable mistakes(Like leaving crap in after surgery), that 5.5% of the total number of doctors wind up being responsible for 57.3% of the total number of payouts(83 percent of doctors haven't had a single claim made against them).

The final peice is really disturbing, however, as it bluntly shows the numbers on how many doctors make mistakes, make payouts, and go undisciplined. The highest percent are those who make 10 or more seperate payouts, and of those, only 32.5% of them are even disciplined. There's even an example of a guy who has made 30 payouts between 1993 and 2004, with all sorts of preventable errors.

In short: There is no 'crisis'. Malpractice payouts are declining. But the problem is with doctors who simply aren't said boo to for repeated mistakes.