The National Practitioner Data Bank (“data bank”) is a federal system that keeps track of all malpractice payments made by liability insurance companies. It can be accessed by hospitals and others who employ physicians, but is not open to public access by patients or their attorneys. One of the major purposes of the data bank was to prevent doctors who commit malpractice from moving from state to state and avoiding knowledge of their malpractice by hospitals who would grant them privileges.

The 2013 information from the data bank has been released. For payments made by medical professional liability insurers for doctors, the number has decreased every year for the past 12 years, from 15,898 payments in 2001 to 9,205 in 2013, a reduction of 42%. Similarly, the total amount of the payments made to patients because of doctor error has gone down every year since 2004, from $4,424,050,000 in 2004 to $3,101,550,000 in 2013, a reduction of 30%, without any consideration for inflation.

Despite the propaganda put out by medical groups and malpractice insurance companies, there is no increase in malpractice litigation and no need for the draconian laws that have been pushed through many state legislatures. Even when those laws have failed, or have been held unconstitutional, the effect is to convince the public (and potential jurors) that there is a rash of frivolous medical malpractice claims that are driving doctors out of business and increasing health care costs. In effect, this legislative effort is a form of massive jury tampering with the goal of discouraging verdicts for injured patients when a case goes to trial.