Self-Defense in Medical Malpractice: How to Derail a Frivolous Malpractice Lawsuit

Every physician in the United States has an 8.5% risk for a medical malpractice lawsuit each year. A patient who is the victim of an adverse outcome understandably misconstrues an error of nature as a medical error and retains an attorney who hires a medical expert. By using statistical significance, a complication that follows any medical intervention can be validated as an error of nature or a medical error with 95% confidence, thus making the malpractice suit frivolous. Therefore, ensuring 18 words appear in a patient’s chart — “With the exception of random occurrences, there is 95% confidence that this medical intervention is safe and effective” — a plaintiff medical expert must demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the “incident risk” of a medical error representing the medical intervention and the “background risk” of an error-of-nature representing the standard of care. Statistical significance is a professional standard that any physician who professes to be a medical expert should be able to determine.