Financial Data in Medical Malpractice Lawsuits – Attorney Yiron Festinger
According to data from Inbal, the government insurance company that insures government hospitals in Israel, in 2019 it paid approximately NIS 300 million to plaintiffs for medical malpractice, representing a significant increase compared to what was paid at the beginning of the decade (an increase of approximately 57%), according to the Ynet website in an article dated December 17, 2019.
Inbal insures slightly more than half of the medical institutions in the country exposed to these lawsuits, which means that the total amount paid in 2019 in this field stood, as published, at approximately NIS 550 million.
The increase in the number of lawsuits and amounts stems primarily from an increase in public awareness of these lawsuits and the damages that may be caused by medical treatment. It should be remembered that until the mid-1980s there were almost no medical malpractice lawsuits at all, not because there were no cases of negligence but due to the doctors' code of silence, as they were unwilling to testify against one another and due to lack of public awareness.
The significance of this fact is that among us walk tens of thousands of disabled individuals, if not more, who do not know at all that their lives were destroyed and they remained disabled due to medical malpractice.
Meanwhile, the code of silence has been broken (although it still exists in some medical fields and doctors fight against expert witnesses for plaintiffs through their professional organizations), and public awareness has increased, partly due to the indirect consent of the Supreme Court which has regulated this field over the years.
In addition, because many of the severe negligence cases occur in the field of obstetrics and the statute of limitations for minors according to the law is 25 years (since it does not count until age 18), there is still a trail of lawsuits by minors in the field of obstetrics and in other fields from the previous period when there was no awareness or it was not possible to obtain expert opinions, and the families of these minors are awakening after twenty years and sometimes more.
Despite the increase in amounts and even in the number of lawsuits filed, the relative number of lawsuits is very low (according to Ministry of Health data, in 2016 only approximately 1,700 lawsuits for medical malpractice were filed in all courts in Israel), certainly relatively speaking compared to what happens in the United States, still due to problems of the code of silence and lack of awareness in disadvantaged populations.
It should be remembered that in the field of car accidents, insurance companies pay over three billion NIS per year in compensation to victims numbering approximately 160,000 or more per year. And only in a minority of claims are lawsuits filed in court. Thus, both the numbers of lawsuits for medical malpractice and the amounts of compensation paid are extremely low considering that the risk to the public as a result of negligence in medical treatment is greater because every citizen, even the healthiest, receives medical treatment during the year.
In any case, the medical establishment publishes, day after day, data about a "flood of lawsuits" and "increase in compensation amounts," aimed at cutting the rights of victims. These data should be treated with suspicion and examined carefully in relation to the economic rise in the standard of living in the last decade, in the average salary and in the cost of healthcare expenses, data which prove that in real terms the compensation amounts for medical malpractice victims at the end of the current decade should have been much higher than those actually paid.
