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In this issue of Neurology, Glick reviews malpractice claims against neurologists or on behalf of patients with neurologic conditions made over a 5- and 11-year period against Massachusetts physicians, and suggests that legal claims data may be a valuable source of information to guide neurologic education.1 This article speaks to neurologists in clinical practice, those in health care administration, and those who perform health services research, by analyzing information that has previously received little attention.
This information will be of interest to neurologists at a purely descriptive level, as it highlights areas of legal vulnerability. For example, neurologists will be interested to know that in approximately two thirds of the 181 cases reviewed, the event leading to the claim occurred in acute care situations, and that patients with cerebrovascular disorders or disorders of the spinal cord and nerve roots were most often involved. In addition, a third of the claims was for failure to diagnose a disease (i.e., nonfeasance), whereas another third was for mistreatment or for a physician doing the wrong thing (i.e., misfeasance). These data are similar to another published report, where errors in the clinical diagnosis of “brain diseases” or tumors of the spinal cord were the most common claims made against neurologists in northern Germany over an 18-year period.2
Glick proposes that these data can also educate physicians about medical …
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