Doctors, Duties, Death and Data: A Critical Review of the Empirical Literature on Medical Malpractice and Tort Reform

Much of the debate on medical malpractice and tort reform ignores the recent emergence of a fairly substantial volume of empirical research on the subject. There have been a large number of empirical (i.e., statistical) papers put out from law professors, economists, and others, on a number of medical malpractice and tort reform topics. This article consists of critical literature review covering selected empirical papers on these topics. The paper asks what malpractice practitioners, state legislatures, and legal academics learn from the data work that's been done.

Rather than report the results of any original data analysis, the article evaluates selected papers for considerations such as (1) significance of the topic; (2) integrity of the statistical methodology; and (3) robustness of the results.