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Hello, my name is Bart Dalton.

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I'm an attorney. I practice in Wilmington, Delaware,

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but a, I also practice in Maryland, Delaware,

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Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

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Um, I've been a trial lawyer

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for the last 35 plus years, uh, really 40 years.

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I've been practicing in medical malpractice

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from the plaintiff's side.

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For all of that time. I've tried many, many cases involving,

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uh, malpractice cases, including radiological malpractice.

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I'm the past president of the American College

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of Trial Lawyers Radiology Malpractice.

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The numbers, as

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with all numbers in medical malpractice cases

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are not real easy to put your hands around.

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You'll look at a lot of literature that will give you a lot

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of different reasons, and frequently the numbers in

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malpractice, uh, incidents, uh, shed more heat than light.

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Uh, the numbers are generally that, uh,

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radiologists are named as the primary defendant in about 4%

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of cases of those cases.

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They're a mix between diagnostic cases

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and communications cases.

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I can tell you that most of the cases I've been involved

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with, um, are a combination

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of both diagnostics and communication.

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About 45% of those cases, uh, deal with oncology.

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The majority of them are either mammography cases

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or they're GI or GU cases.

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There's a particularly good thinker

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and writer in this area, Dr.

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Berlin, Dr. Leonard Berlin, who's, I've read a lot

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of his material and it's, it is, and it's always good.

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Um, he says the malpractice cases over the past three years

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at least, are down 12%, down 10%, down 10, another 10%.

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And they certainly are, uh, he posits that it may be

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because of how expensive medical malpractice cases are,

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and I can guarantee you that's the case.

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We spend at least a hundred thousand dollars in costs

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in a average trial case, but we've spent multiples of that.

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In other cases, uh, we've spent that kind of money in cases

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that we've settled and we settled probably 95% of our cases,

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uh, about 5% go to trial.

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You should know that when we always hear these stories about

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crazy juries, the juries side with the healthcare provider,

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about 80% of the time, both in my state

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and nationally, that's about the numbers,

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but the numbers will vary.

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That number certainly sheds more heat than light

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because the insurance carriers pick what cases go to trial.

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The last tr 12 malpractice cases I've tried were all no

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offer cases in that same period of time.

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I'm sure I've settled more than a hundred cases,

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and in our firm, we're asked,

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and it's sort of average at the level

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that we practice at in other firms, we accept about one

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to one and a half percent of the cases that were offered.

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And remember the New England Journal of Medicine study

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that talks about 1% of the physicians part practicing

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Make up for about 32% of insurance payouts in these cases.

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While the error rate doesn't, according to Dr.

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Berlin, at least, hasn't seemed to change.

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The number of cases is going down.

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And finally, I will say,

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and I've said this to other physician audiences in my

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years of doing this, I've never seen one time

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a physician's personal assets being impacted in

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malpractice litigation.

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There are the basic numbers we want to talk about, not,

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I'd like to talk about vicarious liability.

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I.