The big verdict
Everyone—every professional providing service, every manufacturer, every driver—eventually will make an unreasonable mistake (ie, commit negligence). If that negligence results in harming someone else, our standard legal response is that the negligent person should be financially responsible for the harm to the other. So, a driver who fails to stop at a red light and hits another car is responsible for those damages. But the damages may vary—perhaps a banged-up fender, or, in another instance, with the same negligence, perhaps terrible personal injuries that will disable the other driver for life. Thus, the damages can vary for the same level of carelessness. The “big verdict” may therefore fall on someone who was not especially careless.
Big verdicts often involve long-term care. The opening case vignettes illustrate a concern of medical malpractice generally—especially for ObGyn practice—the very high verdict. Very high verdicts generally reflect catastrophic damages that will continue for a long time. Bixenstine and colleagues found, for example, that catastrophic payouts often involved “patient age less than 1 year, quadriplegia, brain damage, or lifelong care.”16 In the case of serious injuries during delivery, for example, the harm to the child may last a lifetime and require years and years of intensive medical services.
Million-dollar-plus payouts are on the rise. The percentage of paid claims (through settlement or trial) that are above $1 million is increasing. These million-dollar cases represent 36% of the total dollars paid in ObGyn malpractice claims, even though they represent only 8% of the number of claims paid.16 The increase in the big verdict cases (above $1 million) suggests that ObGyn practitioners should consider their malpractice policy limits—a million dollars may not be enough.
In big verdict cases, the great harm to the plaintiff is often combined with facts that produce extraordinary sympathy for the plaintiff. Sometimes there is decidedly unsympathetic conduct by the defendant as well. In the second case, for example, the problems with the medical record may have suggested to the jury that the doctor was either trying to hide something or did not care enough about the patient even to note a serious complaint. In a case we reviewed in an earlier “What’s the Verdict” column, a physician left the room for several minutes during a critical time—to take a call from a stockbroker.16-18
The big verdict does not necessarily suggest that the defendant was especially or grossly negligent.16 It was a bad injury that occurred, for instance. On the other hand, the physician with several malpractice judgments may suggest that this is a problem physician.
Physicians facing multiple lawsuits are the exceptions
A number of studies have demonstrated that only a small proportion of physicians are responsible for a disproportionate number of paid medical malpractice claims. (“Paid claims” are those in which the plaintiff receives money from the doctor’s insurance. “Filed claims” are all malpractice lawsuits filed. Many claims are filed, but few are paid.)
ObGyn has high number of paid claims and high risk of claim payment recurrence. Studdert and colleagues found that the probability of future paid malpractice climbed with each past paid claim.19 They also found that 1% of physicians accounted for 32% of all paid claims. The number of paid claims varied by specialty—obstetrics and gynecology accounted for the second largest number of paid claims (13%). The risk of recurrence (more than one paid claim) was highest among 4 surgical specialties and ObGyns (about double the recurrence rate in these specialties compared with internal medicine).19
A minority of physicians responsible for lion share of paid claims. Black and colleagues followed up the Studdert study. Although there were some differences in what they found, the results were very similar.20 For example, they found that having even a single prior paid claim strongly predicted future claims over the next 5 years. They also found that some “outlier” physicians with multiple paid claims “are responsible for a significant share of paid claims.” They specifically found that, even for physicians in high-risk specialties in high-risk states, “bad luck is highly unlikely to explain” multiple claims within 5 years.
Continue to: Both of the studies just mentioned relied on...