| About 40% of all medical malpractice cases file in the United States are groundless, according to a Harvard analysis published in Wednesday's New England Journal of Medicine. Many of the lawsuits analyzed contained no evidence that a medical error was committed or that the patient suffered any injury, the researchers reported. They said the vast majority of those dubious cases were dismissed with no payout to the patient. However, groundless lawsuits still accounted for 15 percent of the money paid out in settlements or verdicts. The study found 3 percent of the 1,452 claims analyzed were filed by patients who had no injury. Of the claims that involved injuries, about two-thirds were caused by medical error. But the remaining injury claims, or 37 percent, lacked evidence of a medical mistake, and most of those - 72 percent - were thrown out or otherwise resolved without a payout. The cases, randomly selected from five insurance companies, were resolved between 1984 and 2004, resulting in a combined $449 million in verdicts and settlements. The study also confirmed that defending a claim is expensive and long, taking an average of five years to resolve-and found that for every dollar awarded to patients, about half went to cover lawyers' fees and other expenses. Critics of the study claim it was biased because data was taken from insurers, which sometimes are the defendants in malpractice suits. The AMC/NOMA believes this study presents proof positive that frivolous claims are not only making their way through the nation's court systems but also unnecessarily costing both money and time for all involved and that some method of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) would help matters in weeding out meritless claims before they reached a courtroom, such as the AMC/NOMA-backed bill, SB88 currently being considered by Ohio legislators. The AMC/NOMA plans to use data from this study to underscore the clear need for ADR in the NE Ohio region and throughout the state as well.
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