I'm a lawyer and have sued doctors for malpractice. Before bringing such a lawsuit, the lawyer hires an expert witness, another doctor, who testifies there is malpractice. Then, you are facing a deep-pocket insurance defense law firm. Med mal cases are costly and in some states, the damages are limited. No med mal lawyer worth their salt would bring a case unless there was clear malpractice.
Most med mal cases are failure to diagnose. That is, the doctor fails to find out what is wrong with you, and you are harmed as a result. If the doctor runs a battery of tests, however, they can properly diagnose the disease and not harm the patient. For a nominal fee, the doctor can save someone's life. This may be bad for the system as a whole, but it is good for the individual patient.
For context, a “simple” failure to diagnose case against a radiologist is going to cost me close to $20,000 out of pocket, and hundreds of hours of my time - not something I do on a whim.
A judges’s admin assistant that I frequently deal with recently retired. Someone asked her what advice she had for attorneys. Her response - don’t file med mal cases because they’re losers, and I practice in one of the top 5 “judicial hell holes” in America.
1. A person can be sued without being guilty in a criminal or civil sense.
2. They are performing extra tests to cover their asses, not to avoid making mistakes.
3. It is clearly not a good thing as shown by the authors of the study.