• 01
  • March
    2011

As Barry Bialek, MD describes in his article on CoverMD, the easiest method of calculating the expense of a medical error is to "add the cost of health care to the loss of income."

Based on this method, birth injuries from trauma are the costliest type of medical errors. Serious harm caused to an infant at birth combined with a normal life expectancy makes birth injuries the most expensive to treat over time. Cerebral palsy is a common type of condition arising from birth injury, and many patients have average life expectancy, but quite diminished quality of life and loss of potential income.

After cerebral palsy, there are two other common injuries but they're not generally related to mistakes made by physicians at delivery: quadriplegia and untreated unstable angina (a symptom of possible heart attack) that can both come about from cursory examinations and failure to diagnose.

According to CoverMD, here are the top ten costliest medical malpractice mistakes:

  1. Brain injury - trauma at birth
  2. Brain injury - shunt malfunction
  3. Brain injury - asphyxiation in recovery
  4. Brain injury - concussion that goes untreated
  5. Brain injury - due to medication error
  6. Brain injury - undiagnosed "mini-stroke"
  7. Brain injury - unsupervised falls that lead to a brain bleed
  8. Quadriplegia from undiagnosed spinal injury
  9. Quadriplegia from undiagnosed infectious disease
  10. Death from untreated heart attack

Source: The Ten Most Expensive Medical Errors