ABA Family Legal Guide

Health-Care Law

Regulating Health-Care Professionals

Medical Malpractice

What is medical malpractice?

Medical malpractice is negligence committed by a professional health-care provider—a doctor, a nurse, a dentist, a technician, a hospital, or a nursing facility—whose performance of duties departs from a standard of practice of those with similar training and experience, resulting in harm to a patient. Most medical malpractice actions are filed against doctors who have failed to use reasonable care to treat a patient. Though million-dollar verdicts make headlines, in fact the big jury awards you hear about are few and far between.

The goal of a medical malpractice lawsuit is to pay you back if a doctor injures you. Malpractice lawsuits are time consuming and costly for doctors, even if the doctor is insured or wins the case. The fear of malpractice is meant to keep doctors from making medical mistakes and from acting carelessly. In this way, the law can control the quality of health care. Malpractice puts the responsibility on doctors to act in a way that will not result in an injury to you. If doctors are forced to pay for the costs of their medical mistakes, they will be more careful to make sure that mistakes do not happen in the first place.

Note, though, that some observers think that fear of malpractice does not so much improve medical care as make doctors more defensive in how they treat you. The result may be more tests and other measures to establish a solid record of care—good for defense in a malpractice case, but a factor in making health care more time consuming and expensive.

Medical malpractice is discussed in more detail in chapter 14, "Personal Injury."