<span itemprop="author">Howard Smith, MD

In 2004, the AMA declared a “medical malpractice crisis.” At that time, 34 percent of all physicians in the United States had been sued. The practice of medicine was at risk. Hospitals were closing. Coverage for certain high-risk specialtie…

Random mal-occurrences have always accompanied medical interventions, even under the best of circumstances. These are errors of nature. In the 1960s, some attorneys in California were the first to exploit these unfortunate random outcomes to their adva…

Medical malpractice is a subject about which I am passionate. I am an obstetrician-gynecologist; I have been sued five times (one case ends in a mistrial, two in settlements of convenience, and two are dismissed with prejudice); I paid over $1 million …

I write these words after a full week of jury deliberation in the Daniel Penny trial. I now realize that what I have been describing about medical malpractice litigation is a signal of a much more serious problem infecting the social order of the entir…

Of note, today, of all days, when the Supreme Court of the United States is to consider state bans on treatments for gender-affirming care of transsexual youths, virtually every internet site on the subject is blocked. Nevertheless, I am a medical stud…

There are one million physicians practicing medicine in the United States. No medical intervention they recommend is immune from a complication. The exact number of complications is unknown. Some are medical errors inherent to the intervention, while o…

It all begins with a political movement for national health in the 1970s. There are no “health systems,” just doctors and hospitals. Fee-for-service is determined by conventional principles of cost accounting, in which payment for services …

A medical liability litigation industrial complex manipulates medical liability litigation with three talking points. As a result, 85,000 lawsuits are filed per year. Of these, 56,000 are summarily dropped; 28,000 are settled; 300 are plaintiff verdict…

Data indicates that there are 85,000 malpractice lawsuits filed per year. This is the status quo. What if the status quo is worse? There are other data showing that 85,000 is only the number of lawsuits represented by lawyers. There are 3.065 million a…

There are 85,000 medical malpractice lawsuits filed per year. There are 1 million physicians. Therefore, your odds as a doctor for being sued for malpractice are 8.5 percent per year, which corresponds to one lawsuit every 12 years. To make matters wor…