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We also learned that Tennessee is actually one of “safest” states in the Union for doctors when it comes to medical malpractice:

Tennessee is among the lowest-risk states for doctors, in part, Day said, because of a very old legal principle still in use in Tennessee, known as the “local standard of care.”Most states have adopted statewide standards to assess care, but Tennessee cases can still be argued county by county.

“This particularly harms patients in rural areas because the defense claims that only rural doctors know how medicine is practiced in rural areas,” Day said.

Ironically, we also discovered how effective the press has been towards disclosing some facts on public perception about medical malpractice cases :

Twenty years of bad press about the effect of malpractice suits on health care costs also predisposes jurors against plaintiffs, Day said.

We also can feel empathy toward the doctors who want to practice medicine safely and effectively and how the numbers reveal just how seldom medical malpractice cases actually occur :

At the end of the year, [medical malpractice cases are] barely a quarter of 1 percent of all cases, but those cases are on the minds of every doctor, every time they step into an exam room.

We read how these medical malpractice cases affect doctors all over Tennessee, and presumably all over the country:

“The financial and emotional costs of professional liability litigation are tremendous; trying to avoid lawsuits involves every day of my life, every judgment that I make, and every order that I write,” Francis said. “Is that not sad?”

Honestly, this was such a well written article that for a moment, yes, we actually did feel sad. But then we remembered what it was that we just read: If an injury victim files a medical malpractice lawsuit, he or she only has a fifteen percent chance of success, and that’s only if the plaintiff’s attorney takes the case. The odds of success for the plaintiffs are presumably lower in Tennessee, where the “standards of care” vary from county to county and where the juries are going to be more inclined to support the doctors. We also remember that medical malpractice cases only occur in one-quarter of one percent of all the court cases, and that one main reason medical malpractice lawsuits are so expensive is not due to the victim who filed the lawsuit, or even the facts of the case, but because the main tactic of many of the defense attorneys is to outspend the plaintiff by hiring more expert witnesses than the plaintiff’s attorney can afford.

So in a state where the deck is completely stacked against people who file medical malpractice lawsuits and the bulk of the costs increasing from the defense attorneys, we are supposed to believe that the real problem is the injury victims who file medical malpractice suits and their attorneys, who take no money up front, don’t charge by the hour, and pay for the services of any expert witnesses out of their own pockets.

The solution to all of this, by the way, is an even bigger reduction of the miniscule amounts of lawsuits that are being filed:

“Obviously, too many medical malpractice suits are being filed,” said general and vascular surgeon Hugh Francis III, a partner at Memphis Surgery Associates.

We would like to propose another idea that would presumably cut costs. Since there are already “caps” on damages that already exist in so many states, why not also put a “cap” on the amount of money that attorneys on either side can spend on “expert witnesses?” Surely this would help cut the costs for both the defendants and the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and would surely then cut the costs of the insurance premiums, which insurance companies just won’t do.   Why would insurance companies reduce a profit center on doctors who believe that their malpractice premium costs keep spiraling due to malpractice lawsuits, when in fact the numbers reveal the opposite is true? Why then do the insurance companies keep raising the malpractice rates on doctors? Could it be that the insurance company investments have declined due to the market and they need to make up their portfolio balance somewhere?

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in metropolitan Washington, D.C.  A significant portion of our practice is dedicated to helping people who have been injured due to medical malpractice. That includes medical negligence, surgical errors, or misdiagnosis, all of which is a violation of the standard of care. If you or a loved one in the metropolitan D.C. area or Baltimore has been injured by a doctor, surgeon, or medical professional, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation today.

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