The Harvard study stands for a large body of literature. On their own, however, the results don't disprove the Republicans' thesis that many medical malpractice suits are frivolous. Maybe badly injured patients don't sue, while the reflexively litigious clog up the legal system, making tort reform a viable solution. But a new study, released in May, demolishes that possibility. Dr. David Studdert led a team of eight researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham Young University who examined 1,452 medical malpractice lawsuits. They found that more than 90 percent of the claims showed evidence of medical injury, which means they weren't frivolous. In 60 percent of these cases, the injury resulted from physician wrongdoing. In a quarter of the claims, the patient died.
When baseless medical malpractice suits were brought, the study further found, the courts efficiently threw them out. Only 150 of the cases in which the researchers couldn't detect injury received even token compensation. Indeed, a bigger problem was that 256 cases were thrown out of court despite evidence of harm to patients by physicians. The other 1,046 cases, in the research team's opinion, were decided correctly, with damage awards going to the injured and dismissal foiling the frivolous suits.
, but I'm an IL resident and that's another story.
