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- Title
Paid medical malpractice claims: How strongly does the past predict the future?
- Authors
Yousefi, Kowsar; Black, Bernard; Hyman, David A.
- Abstract
When does the past predict the future? In financial markets, warnings that "past results are no guarantee of future performance" are ubiquitous. But in multiple fields (including professional sports, insurance, and criminal law), it is widely believed that the past is a useful guide to the future. Does that insight apply to medical malpractice ("med mal")? Using a novel dataset (which includes detailed data on all licensed physicians and all paid claims in Illinois over a 25‐year period), we study whether past paid med mal claims, physician characteristics, and specialty predict future paid med mal claims. After controlling for other factors, physicians with a single prior paid claim have a fourfold higher risk of future claims than physicians with zero prior paid claims. The more prior paid claims a physician has, the higher the likelihood of a future paid claim. Multiple factors (male gender, having an MD, attending a non‐U.S. medical school, practicing in a high‐claim‐risk specialty, and mid‐career status [6–15 prior years of experience]) predict a higher likelihood of having one or more paid med mal claims.
- Subjects
ILLINOIS; MEDICAL malpractice; FINANCIAL markets; PROFESSIONAL sports; MEDICAL schools; CRIMINAL law; MEDICAL school graduates
- Publication
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2023, Vol 20, Issue 4, p818
- ISSN
1740-1453
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/jels.12371