We speak to folks every day who have had a bad experience with medical care. Sometimes the care leads to injury, and sometimes this injury is substantial. In accepting cases, we have to consider the severity of the injury and the financial impact of the injury on the person or their family. So folks are curious, and rightfully ask “how much is my medical malpractice case worth?” The question is impossible to answer on the preliminary phone call, but there are some resources available that can educate us, and clients, about what the financial impact from the injury might be.
Cost of care is a significant driving factor to getting a big recovery for medical malpractice. Generally speaking, specialized care is more expensive, and long continuous courses of treatment are more expensive. For example in a recent case of ours, a newborn spent nearly two years in the ICU, incurring more than $3M in medical bills. And some children who need continuous care for the rest of their lives may generate medical bills north of $20M.
And only five medical conditions consume half of all health care spending, according to a recent report. These five are rather broad brush descriptors and cover all of the treatment associated with that type of condition.
These five most expensive conditions are cancer, musculoskeletal conditions, cardiovascular conditions, gastrointestinal conditions, and neurological diseases. Malpractice may occur in treating any of those conditions, or malpractice may occur causing many disorders included within these five categories. Nevertheless, a few of these should not surprise you. Cancer, for example, often includes surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and many followups over many years. Some cancers require years and years of treatment, even if only to provide palliative care. Musculoskeletal disorders includes treatment costs for expensive hardware to replace joints in our aging (and increasingly heavy) population. Under each type of condition, each disease requires different targeted treatment, the cost of which may vary widely from one therapy to another.
When folks ask during our preliminary call “much is my medical malpractice case worth” the cost of medical is but one factor that we must consider.
