Health Care Reports & Studies

Below are selected articles, reports, studies, and testimony on medical malpractice liability. Studies of questionable merit are noted and include links to AAJ documents that set the record straight.

These resources are organized by date. Select the date range below that interests you or read the topics within a date to find what you need.

2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 1999-2001 | 1996-1998 | 1990-1995 | Pre-1990

You may contact Media.Replies@justice.org with any questions.

2005

• Price-Gouging by the Pharmaceutical Industry (Compiled by the American Association for Justice, August 2005)

• U.S. Still Spends More on Health Care than Any Other Country; Litigation Not the Cause (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Health Affairs, July/August 2005)
  
  

• Falling Claims and Rising Premiums in the Malpractice Insurance Industry (Jay Angoff, Center for Justice & Democracy, July 2005)

• The Growth of Physician Medical Malpractice Payments: Evidence from the National Practitioner Data Bank (Amitabh Chandra, Shantanu Nundy, Seth A. Seabury, Health Affairs, May 31, 2005)

• Medical Malpractice Law in the United States (Peter Budetti and Teresa Waters, Kaiser Family Foundation Study, May 2005)

• "Five Years after To Err is Human: What Have We Learned?" (Leape, Lucian L. & Berwick, Donald M., Journal of the American Medical Association, 2005)

• Second Annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Report (HealthGrades Quality Study, May 2005)
  Press Release: Medical-Errors Gap Widens Between Best and Worst Hospitals

• Stability, Not Crisis: Medical Malpractice Claim Outcomes in Texas, 1988-2002 (Bernard Black, University of Texas Charles Silver, University of Texas and David Hyman, University of Illinois William Sage, Columbia University, March 2005)

• The Incidence of Adverse Drug Events in Two Large Academic Long-Term Care Facilities (Jerry H. Gurwitz et al., Am J Med. 2005;Vol. 118.251-258)
  Read U.S. Nursing Home Patients Suffer 1.9 Million Adverse Drug Events Annually

• Views On Prescription Drugs And The Pharmaceutical Industry (Kaiser HealthPoll Report, Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2005)
  Read Americans Don't Trust the Pharmaceutical Industry for more information.

2004

• Deadly Errors and Politics Betray a Hospital's Promise (Los Angeles Times Five-Part Series, December, 2004)

• National Survey on Consumers' Experiences With Patient Safety and Quality Information (The Kaiser Family Foundation/Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality/Harvard School of Public Health, November, 2004)
  Read Most Americans Do Not Believe Patient Safety Has Improved for more information.

• Faulty Data and False Conclusions: The Myth of Skyrocketing Medical Malpractice Verdicts (Lewis L. Laska, JD, PhD and Katherine Forrest, MD, MPH, Commonweal Institute, 10/26/04)
  Read AAJ's Summary of Faulty Data and False Conclusions for more information.

• Stable Losses/Unstable Rates 2004 (Americans for Insurance Reform, 10/04)
  Press Release: Insurers Continue to Price-Gouge Doctors Despite Dropping Medical Malpractice Payouts (10/12/04)

• The Effect of Malpractice Liability on the Delivery of Health Care (Katherine Baicker & Amitabh Chandra, National Bureau of Economic Research; August 2004)
  Read Malpractice Payments Are Not the Cause of Premium Increases for more information.

• President Bush “Dis-Torts” the Truth About Impact of Lawsuits on Health Care and the Economy (Public Citizen; August 2004)

• Rand Study: CA Patients Killed or Maimed by Malpractice Lose Most Under Caps (Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights; July 13, 2004)

• HealthGrades Quality Study–Patient Safety in American Hospitals (HealthGrades; July 2004)
  Read 195,000 Lives Lost Each Year to Medical Errors for more information

• Summary Of Rand Study On Poor Quality Of Health Care Across The U.S. (5/04-6/04)

• Medical Malpractice–A Misdiagnosis; The real problem is patient safety (North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers; 3/04)

• Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice (Congressional Budget Office; Released 1/8/04)

• The Incidence of Awareness During Anesthesia: A Multicenter United States Study, Peter S. Sebel, et al, Anesth Analg 2004;99:833-839
  Researchers talked to 19,575 patients at seven U.S. teaching hospitals and found that 25, or about 0.13 percent, reported some degree of awareness during their operations. Read more about medical errors and the impact of caps in Texas.

2003

• Summary of GAO Report: Implications of Rising Premiums on Access to Health Care (GAO-03-836; Released 8/29/03)

• In Brief: Nursing Home Liability Insurance: An Overview Issue Paper # 2003-08 (AARP, 7/03)
  The AARP concludes that a number of solutions "should be given priority over litigation limits, which may have harmful consequences on quality of care and access to compensation for injured residents and their families."
  Read Older Americans Suffer Most from Civil Justice Restrictions for more information

• Testimony of George Washington University Health Law Professor Sara Rosenbaum on H.R. 5 (2/27/03)

• Affidavits from University at Buffalo SUNY Law Professor Lucinda Finley regarding discriminatory aspects of noneconomic caps (2/19/03):
  Narriman Elkins v. Allan W. Lohaus, M.D., et al.
  Florida Consumer Action Network, et al. v. The Honorable John Ellis ('Jeb') Bush

2002

• Medical Negligence, the Litigation Process and Jury Verdicts in Medical Malpractice Cases: Implications for Indiana (Neil Vidmar, PhD; 12/2/02)

• Confronting the New Health Care Crisis: Improving Health Care Quality and Lowering Costs By Fixing Our Medical Liability System (HHS; 7/02)
  Skepticism Alert: Read Bush Still Citing Faulty HHS Study from 2002

• A New Crisis for the Med Mal Market? (James D. Hurley; 4/02)

• The Role of the Jury in Modern Malpractice Law, 87 Iowa L. Rev. 909 (Phillip g. Peters; 3/02)

1999-2001

• Testimony: AAJ Member Sharon Arkin on the ERISA 'Experiment' (4/24/01)

• Profitability By Line By State in 1999 (National Association of Insurance Commissioners; Published 2001)

• To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (Institute of Medicine Committee on Quality of Health Care in America; 2000)
  Read Key Findings from the Institute of Medicine Report for more information.

• Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (National Academy Press; 1999)

• Risk Management: Extreme Honesty May Be the Best Policy, Annals of Internal Medicine Vol.131, Number 12 (Steve S. Kraman, MD, and Ginny Hamm, JD; 12/21/99)

1996-1998

• Trends in Civil Justice Verdicts (RAND Institute for Civil Justice; Published 1996)

1990-1995

• Assessments of Noneconomic Damage Awards in Medical Negligence: A Comparison of Jurors With Legal Professionals, 78 Iowa L. Rev. 883 (Neil Vidmar & Jeffrey J. Rice; 1993)

• Empirical Evidence on the Deep Pockets Hypothesis: Jury Awards for Pain and Suffering in Medical Malpractice Cases, 43 Duke L.J. 217 (Neil Vidmar; 1993)

• Harvard Medical Practice Study Group, Patients, Doctors, and Lawyers: Medical Injury, Malpractice Litigation, and Patient Compensation in New York (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1990)

Pre-1990

• Medical Insurance Feasibility Study from the California Medical Association (San Fransisco: Sutter Publications, 1977)