Malpractice Payouts Falling
July 20, 2009, by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.
Medical malpractice payouts continued to fall across the country last year and account for a only .6% of our nation's health care costs, according to malpractice statistics complied by the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen.
Using data from the government's National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) - which has mandatory reporting requirements - the group found the number of payouts declined for the third straight year. The 11,037 payments recorded in 2008 were 31% fewer than the average number of payments recorded by the NPDB in all previous years.
