The United States spends more on healthcare than any other developed nation. Among states, New York ranks second for health spending. Given what the average New Yorker pays for medical care, there is little tolerance for errors such as misdiagnosis, unnecessary treatment, and medication errors. At the very least, we expect that the cure will not be worse than the disease. Medical errors are one of the leading causes of death in the country.

But medical mistakes are shockingly common. Recent studies estimate that medical errors account for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually in the United States. That makes medical errors the country’s third leading cause of death. More people die every year from medical mistakes than they do from car accidents, pneumonia, and diabetes. Roughly 1 out of 10 U.S. deaths is the result of medical errors or mistakes. As many as 1 in 5 adults may have experienced some type of medical error in their lifetime.

The Sanders Law Firm represents victims of medical malpractice in New York City, New York State, and Long Island. Families turn to us because they’ve been to the doctor hoping to get better—and instead get worse. With more than 50 years of experience and a team of proven trial lawyers, The Sanders Law Firm is one of the largest, most aggressive, and most successful personal injury firms in New York.

If you were harmed due to suspected medical negligence, we can help you understand your legal rights and discuss possible financial compensation for your injuries. To schedule a free consultation with a New York medical malpractice lawyer, call us at 1-833-SANDERS or use our online contact form.

How Common is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is much more common than you might think. While a medical professional typically has many years of training, they can still make mistakes. Not all mistakes that happen in a hospital, doctor’s office, or nursing home rise to the level of medical malpractice. But many do. Thousands of medical malpractice payments are made to injured patients each year.

To Err is Human, a report published in 1999 by the Institute of Medicine, is considered by many to have started the modern patient safety movement. The report, which highlighted the incidence of medical mistakes and preventable deaths in the United States, found that errors cause between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths and over one million injuries every year in American hospitals. Researchers have found that an estimated 2 million adverse events occur in New York State hospitals each year.

More recently, a 2017 Johns Hopkins study claimed that more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year due to medical mistakes. That would make medical errors the third leading cause of death, trailing only after heart disease and cancer. Other research puts the number of people killed annually by medical negligence as high as 440,000.

The authors of the Harvard Medical Practice Study attempted to measure the extent of medical malpractice in hospitals in New York State. They found that adverse events occurred in 3.7% of hospitalizations. Of these, 27% were due to negligence. Based on these figures, in a typical year there are an estimated 2 million adverse events in New York hospitals, with more than 20,000 of these involving negligence.

According to statistics cited by Hofstra University, New York is the fourth leading state for medical malpractice. Nationwide, over a recent ten year period there were nearly 144,000 payments made for medical malpractice. Medscape reports that the average medical malpractice settlement is around $425,000, and the average medical malpractice jury award is over $1 million. In 2018, more than $4 billion was paid to plaintiffs in medical malpractice lawsuits.