Which Doctors Get Sued Most, and What the 2026 Data Tells Attorneys About the Record

If you handle medical malpractice cases long enough, you start to notice the same specialties on the caption. The 2026 numbers confirm it.

Medscape released its Physicians and Malpractice Report 2026 on September 22. More than 1,100 physicians in nearly 30 specialties answered. One in three said a patient has sued them at least once in their career. In the operating room and the labor and delivery unit, it is closer to two in three.

I spent ten years as a physician assistant before I went to law school, and I now spend my days matching attorneys with clinical experts. So I read a report like this with two questions in mind. Where do these cases actually start? And what should an attorney be pulling from the record before deciding whether a case is worth taking?

The specialties with the most exposure

Here is the share of physicians in each specialty who reported being sued, as a sole defendant or alongside others:

• Obstetrics and gynecology: 63%
• General surgery: 63%
• Orthopedic surgery: 62%
• Emergency medicine: 50%
• Anesthesiology: 43%

Across all physicians it was 33%, with specialists at 34% and primary care at 31%.

The American Medical Association’s Physician Practice Benchmark Survey, which tracks the same question from 2016 through 2024, lands a little lower but in the same order: 59.6% of OB-GYNs, 53.1% of general surgeons and 42.0% of emergency physicians have been sued. The AMA puts the all-physician figure at 28.7% in 2024, down from 34% in 2016.

None of that is surprising to anyone who has been inside a hospital. These are the specialties where decisions are fast, the patient is often a stranger, and one missed step can change a life.

Most doctors who get sued get sued once

There is a myth that a small group of bad doctors generates most claims. The survey does not support it. Among physicians who had been sued, 53% said it happened once. Another 43% had been named two to five times, and only 3% had been named six or more times.

That matters for how you frame a case. The defendant in front of you is usually not a repeat offender. More often, a competent clinician was working inside a system that let an error get through. When you build the case around the system, and not only the person, the story usually holds together better in front of opposing counsel and a jury.

Where claims really start: communication

Candello, the claims data collaborative of CRICO, the malpractice insurer for the Harvard medical community, went back through ten years of closed claims. Communication failures contributed to 40% of them, up from 31% in its earlier report. Claims with a communication failure had 39% higher odds of closing with a payment.

In my clinical years, this is exactly how it looked. A lab result posted to the chart after the ordering doctor went off shift. A nurse’s concern that made it into a note but never reached the physician. A discharge instruction the patient nodded along to and did not understand. Nobody intended harm. The information just did not travel.

The safety systems that should be in the chart

Hospitals and practices have well-known systems built to stop these errors. When I look at a potential case, I want to know whether each of these existed and whether anyone followed it:

• Result tracking. Is there a system that flags abnormal results and overdue follow-up, and did it fire? Missed and delayed diagnosis claims often turn on this one question.
• Structured handoffs. Did the facility use a standard handoff format, such as I-PASS, at shift change and transfer? What did the receiving clinician actually know?
• The Universal Protocol. For any procedure: pre-procedure verification, site marking and a time-out before the first incision. If one of the three is missing from the record, that is a question worth asking.
• Surgical counts. Sponge and instrument counts, any count discrepancy, and whether barcode, radiofrequency or intraoperative imaging was used when the count was off.
• Disclosure after harm. What was the patient or family told, when, and by whom? Facilities with a communication and resolution program document this. Silence in the record tells its own story.

My checklist before you commit to a case

1. Map every handoff and transfer of care, and note what information moved with the patient.
2. Follow each abnormal result from the time it posted to the time someone acted on it.
3. Pull the time-out, site-marking and consent records in any procedural case.
4. Request count sheets and incident reports in any retained-item case.
5. Ask for the facility’s policies in effect on the date of care, not today’s version.
6. Have a clinician in the same specialty tell you whether the harm was preventable, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, before you invest in the case.

That last step is where most cases are won or lost early. The right reviewer can tell you early whether the system failed, who owned that failure, and whether the opinion will survive cross-examination.

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Call 844-633-5345 or submit your case at medlegalpro.com/submit-a-case.

Sources

• Medscape. Medscape Physicians and Malpractice Report 2026. September 22, 2026.
• Becker’s ASC Review. The physicians most exposed to malpractice suits. September 24, 2026.
• American Medical Association. Physician Practice Benchmark Survey and Medical liability claim frequency among U.S. physicians.
• Candello (CRICO). Malpractice Risks in Communication Failures.

This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or medical advice.