Medical Negligence Investigation

Medical negligence legal actions require evidence of a causal association between the alleged act of negligence and the injury outcome that is deemed “more probable than not (>50% probable).” Very often the alternative explanation for the adverse outcome, aside from the alleged act of negligence, is the natural course of the disease process for which the treatment was sought. Ultimately, most causal disputes in medical negligence cases can be distilled to the quantification and comparison of competing risks. In this chapter the methods for estimating a comparative risk ratio in a medical negligence action are presented and illustrated with four case examples of the forensic epidemiologic investigation of serious injury following an alleged act of negligence.