Medical Malpractice Statistics – 2013
Diederich Healthcare has just released their annual report on Malpractice payout statistics. The stats are compelling. The stats come from the National Practitioner Data Bank.
Nationwide, 2012 saw $3.6 billion in payouts for medical malpractice. Medical malpractice in Maryland fell in the $100-300 million range. Maryland was not listed in the top five states for medical malpractice. Incidentally, the top five made up 48% of all payouts in the country. Those states were California, New York, Florida, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Medical malpractice in Maryland cost $19.40 per capita. Maryland’s population in the July 2011 census was listed at slightly more than 5.8 million. This means somewhere around $115 million was paid out in this state. Therefore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyers took in about $40 million in fees from local cases.
A full 93% of cases were listed as having settled. (This means settlement before or after a lawsuit, as opposed to a jury verdict.) As we have said before, very few cases result in jury verdicts. Also as we pointed to before, the most common kind of medical malpractice is misdiagnosis and failure to diagnose.
So much for a medical malpractice crisis. Payouts have steadily declined for the last ten years. Payouts in 2012 were 3.4% less than 2011.
To see the full report from Diedrich Healthcare, go here.