IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/ucp/bkecon/9780226762791.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

Suing for Medical Malpractice

Author

Listed:
  • Sloan, Frank A.
  • Githens, Penny B.
  • Clayton, Ellen Wright
  • Hickson, Gerald B.

Abstract

Medical malpractice suits today can result in multi-million-dollar settlements, and a practicing physician can pay $100,000 or more annually for malpractice insurance. Some complain that lawyers and plaintiffs are overcompensated by exorbitant judgments that add to the rising cost of health care. But there has been very little evidence to show whether these arguments are true. In this timely work, six experts in health policy, law, and medicine study nearly 200 malpractice claims to show that, contrary to popular perceptions, victims of malpractice are not overcompensated and our legal system for dealing with malpractice claims is not defective. The authors survey claims filed in Florida between 1986 and 1989 by people who suffered permanent injury or death during birth or during treatment in an emergency room. How often did illegitimate claims result in financial awards? What was the relation between the injury and the amount the patient lost economically? How much did the plaintiffs actually recover? How did the claimants choose their lawyers and what kind of relationship did they have? Contrary to common perceptions, in the majority of cases the claims were merited, and the authors found that claimants were on average substantially undercompensated—only about one-fifth of plaintiffs recovered more than their economic loss caused by injury or death. The evidence in this book suggests that placing dollar limits on malpractice cases is unjustified and that our tort system is not so faulty after all.

Suggested Citation

  • Sloan, Frank A. & Githens, Penny B. & Clayton, Ellen Wright & Hickson, Gerald B., 1993. "Suing for Medical Malpractice," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226762791, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:bkecon:9780226762791
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Catherine T. Harris & Ralph Peeples & Thomas B. Metzloff, 2006. "Placing “Standard of Care” in Context: The Impact of Witness Potential and Attorney Reputation in Medical Malpractice Litigation," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(3), pages 467-496, November.
    2. David M. Studdert & Michelle M. Mello, 2007. "When Tort Resolutions Are "Wrong": Predictors of Discordant Outcomes in Medical Malpractice Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(S2), pages 47-78, June.
    3. Lin, Chang-Ching & Chang, Yun-chien & Chen, Kong-Pin, 2020. "Knowledge in youth is wisdom in age: an empirical study of attorney experience in torts litigation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. Lee D. Cranberg & Thomas H. Glick & Luke Sato, 2007. "Do the Claims Hold Up? A Study of Medical Negligence Claims Against Neurologists," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 4(1), pages 155-162, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:bkecon:9780226762791. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Books Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://press.uchicago.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.