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Medical Malpractice

Professional negligence by a health care provider has implications for both the health and legal professions: Preventable medical injuries increase the overall cost of treatment, while malpractice lawsuits have been blamed for further increasing the cost of health care in the United States. RAND researchers have examined medical malpractice legislation and its effects on stakeholders such as the health care consumer, the medical practitioner, and the legal community.

Journal Article
Do Noneconomic Damage Caps Reduce Medical Malpractice Insurance Premiums? Evidence from North Carolina
The impact of medical malpractice reforms, especially caps on noneconomic damages, is of special interest to policymakers and physicians. This study uses data from North Carolina to examine how caps implemented in noncrisis periods affect malpractice premiums.
Sep 23, 2022
Journal Article
Unintended Consequences of Products Liability: Evidence from the Pharmaceutical Market
This article explains a surprising effect of tort liability in the market for prescription drugs: punitive damages shift liability from doctors to drug companies, but not when physician malpractice liability is limited."
Dec 11, 2020
Journal Article
The Impact of State Medical Malpractice Reform on Individual-Level Health Care Expenditures
Laws limiting malpractice payments may lower state health care expenditures by between 3-4%.
Dec 18, 2017
Journal Article
Progress at the Intersection of Patient Safety and Medical Liability: Insights from the AHRQ Patient Safety and Medical Liability Demonstration Program
Understanding adverse events as the result of complex "systems" failures--rather than of individual negligence--may improve patient safety.
Jan 3, 2017
Journal Article
Above All 'Do No Harm': How Shall We Avoid Errors in Medicine?
This editorial comments on an article in the same journal that demonstrates (through the use of hospital-based adverse drug events) that errors in medicine are prevalent and often preventable.
Jul 12, 2016
Journal Article
Medically Unnecessary Diagnostic Imaging: Emergency Physicians Weigh In
A substantial proportion of advanced imaging studies ordered by emergency physicians may be medically unnecessary. According to a broad survey of emergency medicine professionals, fear of missing a low-probability diagnosis and fear of litigation are perceived as two key contributing factors.
Apr 7, 2015
Journal Article
Emergency Physician Perceptions of Shared Decision-Making
A substantial proportion of advanced imaging studies ordered by emergency physicians may be medically unnecessary.
Apr 7, 2015
News Release
Making It More Difficult to Sue Physicians for Malpractice May Not Reduce 'Defensive Medicine'
Malpractice reform has been advocated by many experts as a key to reining in health care costs. Three states raised the standard for malpractice in the emergency room to gross negligence, but that did not translate into less-expensive care.
Oct 15, 2014
Infographic
How Proposition 46 May Affect California
Describes how changes brought about by California Prop 46 may affect patients, doctors, plaintiffs, lawyers, the health care industry, and the public.
Oct 9, 2014
Journal Article
Making It More Difficult to Sue Physicians for Malpractice May Not Reduce 'Defensive Medicine'
Malpractice reform has been advocated by many experts as a key to reining in health care costs. Three states raised the standard for malpractice in the emergency room to gross negligence, but that did not translate into less-expensive care.
Oct 1, 2014
Dissertation
The Impact of Tort Reform, Medicare Plan Choice, and Geography on Health Care Processes, Outcomes, and Expenditures
Explores structural determinants of health care processes, outcomes, and expenditures.
Sep 30, 2014
News Release
Affordable Care Act Could Change Costs for Auto, Malpractice, Other Liability Insurance
As more Americans become newly covered under the ACA, the cost of providing automobile insurance, workers compensation, and homeowners insurance may decline. But an increase in the number of people using the health care system may trigger an increase in the number of medical malpractice claims.
Apr 9, 2014
Research Brief
The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on Liability Insurance
Summarizes a report that identifies potential mechanisms through which health care reform might affect claim costs for several major types of liability coverage, especially auto insurance, workers’ compensation coverage, and medical malpractice.
Apr 9, 2014
Report
ACA Could Change Costs of Auto, Malpractice, and Other Liability Insurance
As more Americans become newly covered under the Affordable Care Act, the cost of providing automobile insurance, workers compensation, and homeowners insurance may decline. Meanwhile, an increase in the number of people using the health care system may trigger a corresponding increase in the number of medical malpractice claims.
Apr 9, 2014
Journal Article
Medical Malpractice Reform: Noneconomic Damages Caps Reduced Payments 15 Percent, with Varied Effects by Specialty
The impact of medical malpractice reforms on the average size of malpractice payments in specific physician specialties is unknown and subject to debate.
Jan 1, 2014
Journal Article
Time of Day and Decision to Prescribe Antibiotics
We found that primary care clinicians' likelihood of prescribing antibiotics for ARIs increased as clinic sessions wore on, consistent with the hypothesis that decision fatigue progressively impairs clinicians' ability to resist ordering inappropriate treatments.
Jan 1, 2014
Journal Article
Nearly 11 Percent of Physicians' 40-Year Careers Spent with an Open, Unresolved Malpractice Claim, on Average
The U.S. malpractice system is widely regarded as inefficient, in part because of how long cases take to resolve. Malpractice reforms should be assessed by how well they reduce litigation time without undermining patients' needs.
Jan 1, 2013
Journal Article
Medico-legal Risk Associated with Pediatric Mental Health Telephone Consultation Programs
In this survey of six state mental health telephone consultation program directors, we report the annual number of children referred for consultation and the number of lawsuits against consultant clinicians.
Dec 1, 2012
Blog
Could Liability Concerns Derail Clinical Decision Support?
Computerized clinical decision support (CDS) systems have been developed to enhance physician decisionmaking and reduce the incidence of avoidable medical errors. Drug-drug interaction warnings are a mainstay of CDS systems, but they give rise to a fundamental problem that limits the utility of the systems to date.
Jul 6, 2012
Report
The Appropriateness of Recommendations for Hysterectomy
The authors assessed the appropriateness of recommendations for hysterectomies done for nonemergency and nononcologic indications for 497 California women. Seventy percent of the hysterectomies were judged to have been recommended inappropriately.
Jun 19, 2012

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Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Eric Helland

Adjunct Economist

Eric Helland is an adjunct economist at the RAND Corporation, in the Institute for Civil Justice, and the William F. Podlich Professor of Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of over 50 books and articles on topics in law and economics ranging…
Travis Hubble

Ph.D. Student, Pardee RAND Graduate School, and Assistant Policy Researcher, RAND

Travis Hubble is a Ph.D. student in the Research, Analysis, and Design stream at Pardee RAND Graduate School and an assistant policy analyst at RAND. He has a J.D. and an M.A. in philosophy from Boston University and a B.A. from Brigham Young University. Prior to coming to RAND he served in the…

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