Medical Malpractice in Your State

limiting patients' rights does not improve care or lower insurance rates

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North Carolina

According to the American Medical Association, North Carolina is a "crisis" state.

Reality Check:

• The number of doctors has gone up,
• the number of OB/GYNs has gone up,
• the frequency of insurance payments to victims has gone down, and
• the median compensation victims receive has gone down.
  

North Carolina already caps punitive damages.

The Truth About North Carolina: Both the AMA and the N.C. Health Professions Data System agree that the number of ob-gyns is increasing. "While cap proponents contend physicians are leaving the profession or North Carolina or both, the number of doctors in the state has been rising steadily, according to the N.C. Health Professions Data System maintained by UNC Chapel Hill.

The number of obstetrician/gynecologists, an area with some of the highest increases in insurance premiums, climbed from 843 in 1997 to 937 in 2001, the most recent year available."

—"Assembly considers limit on awards; Malpractice laws under scrutiny," Charlotte News & Observer, 7/6/03

Price of Medical Malpractice

Source: Medical Malpractice Briefing Book: Challenging the Misleading Claims of the Doctors' Lobby, Public Citizen Congress Watch, rev. August 2004

Faces of Medical Malpractice

Alice went to a walk-in clinic where she presented 4 out of 5 criteria for sepsis, a blood infection. Rather than treating her or admitting her to a hospital, the clinic advised her to go to the emergency room in the event that her symptoms became worse. The next day Alice went to the local hospital where they noted that she had gone to a clinic the day before, yet did not call the clinic for her test results. The hospital failed to diagnose her with a common blood infection (sepsis) for 16 hours while she waited in pain. At 3:00 am a doctor finally ordered antibiotics, but they were not administered for 2 more hours. At 5:00 am the nurses finally they gave her the simple antibiotics that would save her life. Two days later she was flown to another hospital where the doctors had to amputate parts of her body because the infection had gone unchecked for such an extended period of time. They took her legs above her knees, her left arm and all the fingers from her right hand, she still has one thumb. The case was settled.

Source: American Association for Justice

Read about other victims of medical malpractice in North Carolina.

Number of Personal Injury Lawsuits

There is no litigation explosion. The National Center for State Courts Recently reported that:

• Tort filings have declined by 5% since 1993. Contract filings, meanwhile, which are more likely to involve businesses than tort cases, rose by 21% over the same period.¹
  
  
• Automobile tort filings, which make up the majority of all tort claims, have fallen by 5% by 1993 and 14% since their high in 1996.¹
  
  
• Medical malpractice filings per 100,000 population have fallen 1% since 1998.²
  
  
• In 22 of the 30 states that NCSC examined population-adjusted tort findings declined from 1992 to 2001. The average change in tort filings across all 30 states was a 15% decrease.¹
  

Sources:

1. Examining the Work of State Courts, 2003, National Center for State Courts (NCSC) 2004
2. Medical Malpractice Filings per 100,000 Population in 11 and 17 States, 1993-2002, National Center for State Courts, 2004 (unpublished, on file with author)

Updated February 2005