Indiana patients are injured every day as a result of medical errors by Indiana physicians. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these errors are committed by a relatively small number of physicians.
A 2002 study by the consumer group Public Citizen revealed that approximately 5 percent of the nation’s doctors were responsible for more than 50 percent of the country’s medical malpractice. The study looked at figures from the National Practitioner Data Bank, which collects and maintains information about malpractice verdicts and settlements from across the United States. The study found that 4.8 percent of doctors in the United States was responsible for 51.1 percent of all the reports made to the Data Bank. Those doctors paid out nearly $21 billion in damages, more than 53 percent of the total damages paid during the period analyzed by the study.
The Public Citizen study is consistent with what Garau Germano, P.C. has seen in its practice. Our firm is currently handling multiple cases involving an Indiana doctor who has had more than 30 malpractice claims made against him since 1986. Unfortunately, the medical profession has never taken any steps to remove this doctor from practice. As long as the medical profession refuses to police its own, lawsuits will be necessary to hold physicians accountable for preventable errors.