Medical Malpractice Reform

Medical malpractice is a tort, a wrongful act inwhich one person is alleged to have harmedanother, giving rise to a civil action-or lawsuit-to recover damages. The harm typically occurs when a hospital or physician acts negligently during the course of medical treatment and can take a wide range of forms, from egregious lapses of care, as when a surgeon performs the wrong operation, to less obvious failures, as when a doctor incorrectly diagnoses a disease. Intentional torts constitute a second category of medical malpractice, including assault, battery, defamation, invasion of privacy, misrepresentation, disclosure of confidential information, and false imprisonment. Breach of contract claims form a third category. This chapter focuses on negligence-based malpractice claims, as the others arise with much less frequency and are less significant to the issue of malpractice reform.