If you are trying to understand whether what happened to you or a family member is common, reliable data can put your experience in context. Our Atlanta medical malpractice lawyer can explain what the numbers mean for your situation and review your records individually. Moriarty Medical Malpractice Lawyers compiled this page from government agencies and peer-reviewed research. Each figure links to its source.
Statistics describe large groups of patients. They cannot show whether negligence occurred in any one case.
Harm to Hospitalized Patients
- 10% to 12% of hospitalized patients experience an adverse event, and about half of those events are considered preventable, according to AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
- About 1 in 38 hospitalized patients had at least one healthcare-associated infection on any given day in 2023, down from 1 in 31 in 2015, according to the CDC.
- An estimated 518,000 healthcare-associated infections occurred in U.S. hospitals in 2023. Pneumonia, surgical site infections, and gastrointestinal infections were the most common, according to the same CDC release.
Georgia was one of 10 states whose hospitals took part in that CDC survey, according to the University of Minnesota’s CIDRAP. Infections, falls, and medication problems during a hospital stay can become hospital negligence claims when they result from lapses in care.
Diagnostic Errors
- An estimated 795,000 Americans are permanently disabled or die each year because a dangerous disease is misdiagnosed, according to a Johns Hopkins-led study published in BMJ Quality & Safety.
- 38.7% of those serious harms involved five conditions: stroke, sepsis, pneumonia, venous thromboembolism, and lung cancer, according to the same study.
Our guide to misdiagnosis explains when a diagnostic error may amount to negligence.
Surgical and Anesthesia Errors
- About 1 in 10,000 procedures involves a retained surgical item, and about 1 in 100,000 involves wrong-site surgery, based on median rates from a systematic review summarized by AHRQ.
- More than 4,000 surgical never events occur each year in the United States, according to a national study published in the journal Surgery.
- 2,211 anesthesia-related deaths were recorded in the United States from 1999 to 2005, a rate of 8.2 per million hospital surgical discharges, according to research published in Anesthesiology. Overdose of anesthetics accounted for 46.6% of those deaths.
Our guides to surgical errors and anesthesia errors explain how these errors differ from known risks.
Malpractice Claims and Payments
- 55.7% was the decline in the rate of paid malpractice claims against U.S. physicians from 1992 to 2014, according to a National Practitioner Data Bank analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Over the same period, the average payment and the share of payments exceeding $1 million increased.
The National Practitioner Data Bank, maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers a public data tool with malpractice payment reports by state and year. The data reflect payments made on behalf of practitioners. They do not capture every error or every claim.
Georgia Medical Board Oversight
- About 38,000 physicians were regulated by the Georgia Composite Medical Board, which typically receives 1,500 to 2,500 complaints against physicians each year, according to a 2020 state performance audit.
- 18 public disciplinary actions resulted from the roughly 1,050 cases within the board’s jurisdiction that it closed in fiscal year 2020. More than 98% of cases closed without formal discipline, according to the same audit.
- 4.6 months was the median time to close malpractice-related complaints in fiscal year 2020, according to the audit.
The audit also noted that Georgia law requires liability insurers and physicians themselves to report malpractice settlements and judgments to the board. Board discipline and a civil claim are separate processes. Our guide to researching a provider explains how to look up a Georgia physician’s license and any public board orders.
What the Numbers Mean for Your Situation
These figures show that medical errors are a serious public health issue, but they do not decide any individual case. A bad outcome can occur even with careful treatment, and many errors never lead to a claim. What matters in your case is what the records show about the care you received. Our failure to diagnose page and our other practice pages explain how our attorneys evaluate specific types of claims.
Talk With Our Attorneys
Moriarty Medical Malpractice Lawyers represents patients and families in Atlanta and nearby communities, including Forest Park. Contact us to schedule a free consultation and have our attorneys review your records.
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