Medical malpractice claims are becoming more expensive, more volatile, and more consequential, even as overall claim frequency has decreased, driving up malpractice costs and rate pressure.

Actual medical malpractice claims frequency has declined from historic levels. In 2025, claims frequency was approximately 4.6 percent, down from 7.5 percent in 2016 and well below the roughly 17 percent average observed between 1991 and 2005. While physicians report fewer lawsuits than in the …

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Physicians today face mounting challenges in the practice of medicine, including declining reimbursement, workforce shortages, administrative burdens, and the ever-present risk of litigation. The Doctors Company’s latest study, “Nuclear Verdicts and Rising Costs: How Inflation Is Impacting Medical Malpractice Claims,” highlights another pressure point: the accelerating impact of inflation on medical malpractice claims.

The research study, conducted by Moore …

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In Philadelphia, a family alleged that a birth injury had led to their baby’s cerebral palsy. They sued Penn Medicine and were awarded $183 million.

In Boise, a jury recently awarded the state’s second-highest-ever award, $13.5 million, in a suit against an emergency medicine group that was filed after a patient was disabled by a stroke. This verdict …

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The pandemic has raised pressing questions around preventive measures, vaccines, and safe treatment, but it has also obscured one key lingering uncertainty for medical professionals: Where are all the medical malpractice claims?

A variety of factors create a cloud of uncertainty around when, if ever, we will see the claims we expected from the care provided just before the pandemic, …

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