Medical Malpractice Stats For Your Consideration

Doctors and nurses who attempt to go without medical malpractice insurance are taking major risks with their careers. If you are a doctor or nurse and you are going without malpractice insurance, you may truly regret it if something goes very wrong with a patient. If you need any further encouragement to get insurance from a medical malpractice insurance agency, here are some malpractice stats to consider. 

Third Leading Cause of Death: Medical Malpractice

You may never intend to cause someone's death, but as a nurse or doctor, you will be faced with thousands of patients over the course of your career, and some will die. Whether or not you are actually responsible for these accidental deaths, surviving family members may still feel compelled to sue. Your malpractice insurance pays for these claims to be settled. If you do not have malpractice insurance, you will lose your job and your income and still have to pay the lawsuit. In 2016, Johns Hopkins University conducted research that found that medical malpractice deaths were the third leading cause of death in the U.S.! That is reason enough to consider getting insurance. 

Medical Malpractice Payouts Are in the Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Each Year

In the top five states alone where thousands of medical malpractice lawsuits were filed this past year, there were payouts of hundreds of millions of dollars paid out to claimants. This is just a reflection of the lawsuits paid out on cases where the medical professionals actually had insurance, and it does not reflect or include the payouts of cases where professionals did not have insurance. Those numbers are difficult to quantify, but you can bet that those numbers are far higher than the stats for lawsuits and professionals with malpractice insurance. 

Lawsuits May Have Dropped, but the Claims Are Very High

If you have heard that malpractice lawsuits have dropped off in recent years, that is correct. However, it should not be the reason you choose not to carry malpractice insurance. While the number of malpractice lawsuits may have dropped, the amount of money claimants seek has grown substantially. Many are filing claims for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is more than many doctors and nurses make in a year. If you do not want to take a risk with your malpractice hearings and possibly lose your case and lots of money you have not even earned yet, get insurance. 

For more information, contact a medical malpractice insurance agency.

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