Attorneys who specialize in such lawsuits attributed the decline to the fact that fewer people have received healthcare in person during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with a general sense of gratitude among patients for the sacrifices healthcare workers have made throughout the past 2 years…Malpractice Suits Against Family Physicians Declined in 2021: Survey, Marcus A. Banks, 2022
The most common reasons for malpractice lawsuits were failure to diagnose/delayed diagnosis (43%), poor outcome/disease progression (23%), wrongful death (14%),
complications from treatment/surgery (13%),and failure to treat/delayed treatment (11%).
Nearly all family physicians (95%) who responded to the survey said that they were “very surprised” or “somewhat surprised” to be part of a malpractice suit and that they frequently felt strong emotions about the experience.
The vast majority (84%) of respondents said their lawsuits weren’t warranted.
Roughly half of family physicians (53%) said they believed the outcome of their lawsuit was fair.
The largest proportion of respondents (43%) said they would have done nothing differently, although almost 1 in 5 (17%) said they would have conducted better chart ocumentation.
Almost two thirds of family physicians (63%) said being sued did not negatively affect their careers, while 29% said they no longer trusted patients and treated them differently.