“Frequent Flyer” is the name given to a doctor who gets sued for malpractice on a regular basis. While a lawsuit filed against a doctor does not mean that the doctor does not provide good quality care, multiple lawsuits against the same doctor are a giant red flag. Multiple suits are indicative of a physician with poor skills, either medical or social or both. A doctor has to be deficient in some areas to draw multiple malpractice suits. If you go to one of those doctors, you are significantly more likely to become a victim of the doctor’s poor care.

A recent study of all of the malpractice claims paid throughout the United States over a 10 year period found that a small number of doctors were responsible for a large percentage of all claims that were paid. Approximately 1% of the doctors accounted for 32% of all claims paid. Of the doctors who had a paid claim during the study period, 84% had only one. 16% had two while 4% had at least 3 paid claims.

Even paid claims are not certain proof that a doctor committed malpractice, but they are far more significant than the fact that a claim was made that went unpaid. Unfortunately, while the researchers had full access to nationwide data about the identities of doctors with paid claims, that information is not available to the general public. When suits against a doctor are settled before trial with a payment, the doctor always insists on a confidentiality provision to keep the fact of payment a secret from the public and the medical community. You are not allowed to know so all you have to go on is the fact of suit and the occasional jury verdict against the doctor.

The researchers found some interesting information about who was most likely to have a malpractice claim in the future. Some predictors that made a future malpractice claim more likely for doctors with paid claims were male sex, older doctor, and how many prior paid claims the doctor had. The more paid claims a doctor had, the more likely he was to be successfully sued again during the study period.

There are some things to keep in mind when considering the significance of claims against doctors and whether they ended up in a payment or not. There are a lot of medical mistakes being made that never lead to a claim so even a frequent flyer may be worse than he or she seems. The reasons for this are numerous.

One reason is that most people like their doctors and are reluctant to sue them. Good people skills on the part of a doctor will excuse a lot of poor care.

Another reason is that, thankfully, most malpractice does not cause a serious injury and it is only those who have a serious injury who can find a lawyer willing to make a claim on their behalf. Malpractice cases are complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Multiple expert witnesses are always going to be necessary and some charge over $1,000 an hour. If a case does not have a value approaching $500,000, very few experienced malpractice attorneys will take it on.

A third reason is that doctors and hospitals don’t like to talk about how mistakes cause patient injuries. It is a rare case indeed in which the doctor or hospital tells the patient that they made a mistake and that is the reason the patient was injured. Most of the time, the patient is left to try and figure this out for himself. While in most cases the medical records are not falsified, they don’t tell the whole story about what actually happened. The patient is trying to figure out what happened with one hand tied behind his back.

Lastly, juries don’t like to believe that doctors and hospitals make mistakes that kill and injure people. For that reason alone, doctors and hospitals win 85-90% of the malpractice cases that go to trial. Many of these cases are good cases but the jury isn’t able to understand the medicine or believes doctors are being persecuted by people out to make a quick buck. This is very discouraging to patients thinking about suing and to the lawyers who are considering whether to take their case or not.

Do your homework before agreeing to let a doctor treat you but realize that, no matter how diligent you are in investigating the doctor, important information is being deliberately hidden and the deck is stacked against you.

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