Medical Malpractice Cases Drop Off

As some states continue adopting laws refining the requirements of a medical malpractice lawsuit, the number of payments made by physicians for malpractice claims dropped to the lowest level in recent years.

According to figures by the National Practitioner Data Bank, the number of these payments fell to 11,037 last year, which is the lowest number since the organization began tracking data in 1990, the Commercial Appeal reports.

In some states, as in Tennessee, new laws require plaintiffs to certify that they've conferred with an expert before filing suit. The law, passed in 2008, evidently affected courtroom trends as the number of medical malpractice cases in the state dropped by 65 percent between October 2008 and May 2009.

Mississippi legislation passed in 2004 set a $500,000 cap on the amount of money plaintiffs can receive for non-economic damages.

Furthermore, as research director for the consumer-advocacy group Public Citizen, Taylor Lincoln, told the news source, "I think it's become harder to get lawyers to take malpractice cases. Only the most clear-cut and the most egregious cases, in terms of the potential financial recovery, can be pursued."

In 1999 the Institute of Medicine reported that medical malpractice contributed to as many as 98,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.