Most physicians are competent, ethical, and highly skilled. However, medical doctors are human. Medical malpractice occurs when a doctor or other health care provider is negligent or fails to follow accepted standards of practice, causing harm to a...

Medical malpractice is an act or omission by a health care provider which deviates from accepted standards of practice in the medical community and which causes injury to the patient. Simply put, medical malpractice is professional negligence (by a...

Litigation vs. mediation: Which is the better choice? Dr. Stress has lost three medical malpractice cases in 10 years. All have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments, mandatory reporting of his losses to the National Practitioner's Data Bank, increases in...

The Medical Malpractice Myth. By Tom Baker. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. 222. $22.50 cloth; $14.00 paper. Reviewed by Sarah Jain, Stanford University With The Medical Malpractice Myth, Tom Baker has contributed a lucid and detailed account of...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Tuesday for capping medical malpractice lawsuits, a point that drew loud applause at an Iowa medical school.Romney focused on health care in an address to some 500 students and faculty at Des Moines University. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Tuesday for capping medical malpractice lawsuits, a point that drew loud applause at an Iowa medical school.Romney focused on health care in an address to some 500 students and faculty at Des Moines University. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney...

A medical malpractice case occurs when the victim of medical malpractice files a claim against their physician on the basis of negligent care. Most states want to enact a cap on non-economic damages that occur with malpractice lawsuits, believing that this will cut health care costs. A tort reform acts by limiting how much a person can receive through their lawsuits.

The specter of medical malpractice in the United States has assumed crisis proportions. The American Medical Association has declared that malpractice issues are at least "serious and deteriorating" in 44 states. At the heart of the malpractice crisis appears to be a tort system without adequate controls.