Medical malpractice is an act or omission by a health care provider which deviates from accepted standards of practice in the medical community and which causes injury to the patient.

A recent study by Heathgrades found that an average of 195,000 hospital deaths in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 in the U.S. were due to potentially preventable medical errors. A 2006 study by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies study found that medication errors are among the most common medical mistakes, harming at least 1.5 million people every year. According to the study, 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries occur each year in hospitals, 800,000 in long-term care settings, and roughly 530,000 among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics. The report stated that these are likely to be conservative estimates. In 2000 alone, the extra medical costs incurred by preventable drug related injuries approximated $887 million -- and the study looked only at injuries sustained by Medicare recipients, a subset of clinic visitors. None of these figures take into account lost wages and productivity or other costs.

Deaths due to preventable medical errors exceed the deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, and AIDS.

Many cases involve patients who were given the wrong medication, the wrong dosage, or a drug know to interact adversely with another drug they are taking. According to the American Medical Association, most avoidable serious mistakes are due to prescribing errors and inadequate monitoring of patients by doctors.

Common Areas of Medical Malpractice

* Surgical Errors
* Misuse of Anesthesia
* Improper Medication
* Failure to Diagnose
* Experimentation/Use Unapproved Procedures or Medication
* Inadequate Screening of Patients