A new paper in NEJM by Anupam Jena, Seth Seabury, Darius Lakdawalla, and Amitabh Chandra illuminates many of the important aspects of malpractice risk: how it varies by specialty, how many claims lead to payments, the size of payments, the chance of a claim in a year and over a career, etc. According to the authors, it
provide[s] a glimpse into U.S. malpractice risk among physician specialties. High rates of malpractice claims that do not lead to indemnity payments, as well as a high cumulative career malpractice risk in both high- and low-risk specialties, may help to explain perceived malpractice risk among U.S. physicians.
The paper is ungated.
