About one in three physicians report they’ve been sued for medical malpractice during their career, a new study from the American Medical Association (AMA) found.

The study analyzed 14,000 responses from AMA Physician Practice Benchmark Surveys between 2016 and 2022. The longer a physician works in the industry, the higher their risk of getting a malpractice claim, according to the study.

Almost half of physicians over the age of 54 have been sued in their career, versus 9.5% of physicians younger than 40 years old, according to the study. Specialty and gender influence the likelihood of being sued: General surgeons and ob-gyns, as well as men physicians, had the highest risk, per the study.

“Even the most highly qualified and competent physicians in the US may face a medical liability claim in their careers, however, getting sued is not indicative of medical errors,” AMA President Jack Resneck Jr. said in a statement. “All medical care comes with risks, yet physicians are willing to perform high-risk procedures that offer hope of relief from debilitating symptoms or life-threatening conditions.”

Sixty-five percent of the claims against physicians from 2016–2018 were dropped, and of the 6% that went to trial, the defendant won almost 90% of the time, according to the study.

Of the medical specialties, ob-gyns and general surgeons had the highest number of liability claims, because the risk of patient harm is high. Almost two-thirds of ob-gyns and 59.3% of general surgeons reported being sued during their career, the study found. Notably, ob-gyns face a heightened risk of lawsuits in states with strict abortion bans. On the other end of the spectrum, only 7.1% of immunologists had a claim filed against them.

Keep reading here.—KW

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Kristine at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristine for her number on Signal.

HIPAA or HITRUST, that’s the question—at least if you’re a healthcare-based business. But how do you know which framework will help you protect sensitive patient health information best? The pros at Thoropass have your back.

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More pregnant people who are incarcerated or experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness will have free access to a doula under a new expansion project in New York City.

The Helping Promote Birth Equity Through Community-Based Doula Care Program (HOPE) will increase the number of doulas from the 12 currently working with NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H), and provide additional training based on the needs of pregnant patients who are incarcerated or experiencing housing insecurity through a three-year, $2 million grant.

“With the support from [the grant], we can better assist our community members who have historically faced disproportionately high adverse childhood experiences, chronic health challenges, limited support during the critical perinatal period, and poor maternal and child health outcomes,” Sheela Maru, HOPE faculty lead and H+H/Elmhurst attending physician, said in a statement.

The program, which launched in 2022 at two H+H facilities in Queens, aims to address maternal health disparities, especially for Black patients and other patients of color.

In 2018, Black women in New York were 2.3x more likely to experience potentially life-threatening childbirth complications compared to white women in the state, according to a 2020 report from the New York Health Foundation.

Community-based doulas provide nonclinical physical, emotional, and educational support throughout the pregnancy and postpartum period. They can help educate patients on topics such as pregnancy risk factors or breastfeeding, and provide both prenatal and postpartum home visits, according to a 2022 report from the federal Office of Health Policy. Doulas also function as patient advocates and help communicate patients’ needs and concerns to their medical team.

Keep reading here.—KW

On Fridays, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Mark Angelo, a physician and CEO of Delaware Valley Accountable Care Organization (DVACO) in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Angelo talked about the challenges of running an accountable care organization (ACO), or a group of providers and payers that join together to provide quality care while reducing unnecessary healthcare spending. Angelo also laid out his projections for the future of value-based care.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in healthcare?

Our value-based care organization convenes providers and payers to improve the quality and cost of care. We decrease unnecessary hospitalizations and focus on ambulatory sensitive conditions—things that should be managed in an outpatient area so people don’t have to be hospitalized unnecessarily.

We work with any payer that’s willing to work with us, and that’s actually significantly appealing to providers because providers don’t want to deliver different care to different patients. They don’t want to have to worry about “Is this a Medicare patient? Or is this a patient who has Medicare Advantage? Or is this a Humana patient?” They want to just be able to deliver the best care that they can. It’s of great benefit to everyone, really.

As CEO, I get to oversee a number of aspects of care for the patient: how we decrease the cost of care, how we pick our populations of focus, how we’re going to decide who our riskiest patients are, and how we help to drive care coordination services toward a particular sort of patient. I also still see palliative care patients.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: An air quality advisory was sent to ~100 million people in America this week due to the effects of recent Canadian wildfires. (NBC News)

Quote: “When you’re dying and somebody touches you without expectation of anything in return, you just get to be.”—Ilyse Streim, a massage therapist, on providing care to hospice patients (KFF Health News)

Read: Some hospitals are working to reduce their carbon emissions. The healthcare industry produces 8.5% of national greenhouse gas emissions. (Politico)

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Catch up on the top Healthcare Brew stories you may have missed:

• The pandemic is forcing physician practices to switch business models
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• Psychedelic therapies will soon have their own CPT code