Medical malpractice facts and statistics

Americans estimated to die or be permanently disabled by diagnostic error each year (2023)

795,000

Source

US hospital admissions with at least one adverse event, in a 2023 study of 11 hospitals

23.6%

Source

Canadian hospital stays with at least one harmful event (2025-2026)

1 in 17

Source

Paid to patients by Canada's physician defense organization in 2025

$341 million

Source

How often patients are harmed in the United States

• 23.6% of hospital admissions had at least one adverse event, nearly one in four, in a review of more than 2,800 admissions at 11 US hospitals. (Bates et al., NEJM, 2023)
• 22.7% of those adverse events were judged preventable, so about 7% of all admissions involved a preventable adverse event. (Bates et al., NEJM, 2023)
• At least 1.5 million preventable adverse drug events occur in the US each year. (Institute of Medicine, 2006)

Diagnostic errors

• An estimated 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled by diagnostic error each year: 371,000 deaths and 424,000 permanent disabilities. This is a modeled estimate, with a plausible range of 598,000 to 1,023,000. (Newman-Toker et al., BMJ Quality & Safety, 2023)
• Vascular events, infections and cancers account for about three quarters of those serious harms, and missed or delayed stroke is the single largest cause. (Newman-Toker et al., 2023)
• About 1 in 20 US adults who seek outpatient care, roughly 12 million people a year, experience a diagnostic error; the authors estimated about half could be harmful. (Singh et al., BMJ Quality & Safety, 2014)

Deaths from medical error: why the estimates differ

• A widely quoted estimate put deaths from medical error at 251,454 a year, which would make it the third leading cause of death in the US. It was extrapolated from four earlier studies to 2013 hospital admissions, and many researchers have disputed it. (Makary and Daniel, The BMJ, 2016)
• A later review of hospital deaths found 3.1% were preventable, about 22,165 deaths a year, and about 7,150 of them among patients expected to live more than three months. (Rodwin et al., Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2020)

These numbers differ because they measure different things, in different settings, with different methods. None of them is a direct count. Sources: IOM, 1999, Makary and Daniel, 2016, Rodwin et al., 2020, Newman-Toker et al., 2023.

Who files claims, and who gets sued

• Only about 1.5% of patients injured by negligence in a large study of 1984 New York hospital records filed a malpractice claim; statewide there were about 7.6 negligent injuries for every claim. (Localio et al., NEJM, 1991)
• In a review of 1,452 closed claims, about 97% involved a real injury and about 63% involved an error; 72% of claims without an error received no payment. (Studdert et al., NEJM, 2006)
• 28.7% of US physicians say they have been sued at least once in their career, and 1.8% were sued in the previous year. About 60% of obstetrician-gynecologists and 53.1% of general surgeons have been sued. (AMA, 2024 data, published 2026)
• Each year, 7.4% of physicians faced a malpractice claim and 1.6% had a claim that led to a payment; by age 65, an estimated 75% of physicians in low-risk specialties and 99% in high-risk specialties had faced a claim. (Jena et al., NEJM, 2011, data from 1991 to 2005)

How claims end, and how long they take

• 72% of malpractice claims closed between 2016 and 2018 were not paid, and 65% of claims against physicians were dropped, dismissed or withdrawn. Of the 6% decided at trial, the defendant won 89%. (Medical Professional Liability Association data, cited by the AMA, 2026)
• Only 4.5% of claims reached a trial verdict, and physicians won 79.6% of those. Claims took 19 months on average to close, and 25.1 months when a lawsuit was filed. (Jena et al., Archives of Internal Medicine, 2012, claims closed 2002 to 2005)
• On average it took about five years from injury to the end of a claim, and for every dollar paid to patients, about 54 cents went to legal, court and other administrative costs. (Studdert et al., NEJM, 2006)

Malpractice payments in the United States

• The rate of paid malpractice claims fell 55.7%, from 20.1 to 8.9 per 1,000 physician-years, between 1992-1996 and 2009-2014. (Schaffer et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2017)
• The average payment was $329,565 in 2014 dollars, and 7.6% of paid claims exceeded $1 million. (Schaffer et al., 2017, National Practitioner Data Bank data 1992 to 2014)
• Diagnostic error was the most common allegation in paid claims (31.8%), and 32.1% of paid claims involved a patient's death. (Schaffer et al., 2017)
• The medical liability system cost an estimated $55.6 billion in 2008, about 2.4% of US health spending; payments to patients were about $5.7 billion of that, and defensive medicine about $45.6 billion. (Mello et al., Health Affairs, 2010)

Canada

• 1 in 17 acute care hospital stays in Canada involved at least one harmful event in 2025-2026: about 155,000 of 2.65 million stays, not counting Quebec or patients with mental health and substance use diagnoses. (Canadian Institute for Health Information)
• The Canadian Adverse Events Study found 7.5 adverse events per 100 hospital admissions in 2000, and 36.9% were judged preventable: roughly 185,000 admissions with an adverse event and 70,000 preventable ones a year. (Baker et al., CMAJ, 2004)
• The Canadian Medical Protective Association, which protects about 119,000 member physicians, paid $341 million in compensation to patients on behalf of its members in 2025, 6.1% more than in 2024, and about $2.6 billion from 2016 to 2025. (CMPA 2025 Annual Report)
• In 2025, 726 legal actions were served on CMPA members. Of 1,062 legal actions resolved, 669 were dismissed, discontinued or abandoned, 342 settled, and 51 went to judgment: 35 for the physician and 16 for the patient. (CMPA 2025 Annual Report)
• Canada caps damages for pain and suffering. The Supreme Court set the cap at $100,000 in 1978; indexed for inflation, it was about $461,000 as of November 2024. (Andrews v. Grand & Toy, 1978; McCague Borlack, 2025)
• In Ontario, the basic limitation period is two years from when you knew, or should have known, about the claim, with an ultimate limit of 15 years in most cases. (Ontario Limitations Act, 2002)

What this means if you were harmed

Most harm in health care never becomes a claim, and most claims that are filed close without a payment. If you think you were harmed, the useful first steps are the same everywhere: ask for your medical records, write down dates while you remember them, and talk to a lawyer before your deadline. Deadlines are short in many places, so check yours with our filing deadline calculator, read the guide for your state or province, and see how we pick the lawyers on our lists.