Skip to content


Medical Malpractice report shows increased severity despite lower frequency

The Insurance Information Institute has just released a comprehensive look at Medical Malpractice outlining recent developments and industry trends (read more at Medical Malpractice: The Topic). This article breaks down the industry by looking at, among other things, market conditions and national developments.

Key highlights include

  • Damage caps can save $54 Billion in medical costs by reducing premiums by about 10%
  • Fewer claims are being filed as a result of tort reform, improved patient safety initiatives and better risk management
  • Claim values, despite decrease in volume, continue to rise
  • Tort costs for medical malpractice claims are greater than other types of tort claims
  • Defense and cost containment expenses rose in 2008 to 58.1% of incurred loss, up from 55.1%
  • Defensive medicine accounts for 10% of medical care costs

It appears that tort reform measures work to decrease premiums and alleviate the high cost of Malpractice on medical costs.

Posted in Medical Malpractice, SPOT on Issues.

Tagged with , , , , , .


2 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

Continuing the Discussion

  1. Med Mal Update: Reasons for decrease in frequency and recent Illinois court decision to strike down damage caps – The Claims SPOT linked to this post on February 5, 2010

    […] in frequency and recent Illinois court decision to strike down damage caps In response to my post, medical malpractice report shows increased severity despite lower frequency, I received a number of Linked-In comments that I felt offered an interesting perspective on this […]

  2. Med Mal Update: Reasons for decrease in frequency and recent Illinois court decision to strike down damage caps – The Claims SPOT linked to this post on July 26, 2010

    […] response to my post, medical malpractice report shows increased severity despite lower frequency, I received a number of LinkedIn comments that I felt offered an interesting perspective on this […]



Some HTML is OK

or, reply to this post via trackback.

*