I wish to bring to your attention information we have accumulated and analyzed from the malpractice data I have been fortunate to have gained access to in my capacity as director of credentialing for One Call Medical, Inc., a broker for workman’s compensation cases which, at present, has over 9,000 active American radiologists on its panel of image interpreters. That is more than one quarter of all the radiologists in the country and I would imagine includes many of you.

I must state to dispel any anxiety about specific information about any of you, that when we evaluated the data collectively the information was thoroughly deidentified. Hence, I do not have at hand nor did my researchers during these investigations have particular data about any one of you. Of course, in my capacity as a credentialer, I looked at specific information about each new prospective enrollee on One Call’s panel and I looked again at longer term enrollees too because there was a mandatory 3 year recertification requirement. Yet individual case histories with respect to malpractice were removed from the data assessment process.

The information we had available was I.D. number, location, gender and an abbreviated listing of all claims made against a radiologist from the beginning of his or her career. The narrative of each case consisted of one or two sentences outlining the primary allegation of the claim as well as the outcome i.e., if the claim was aborted initially or abandoned before judgment, or judged to be in favor of the plaintiff either before the trial at settlement or by verdict by jury. Also listed was the settlement or verdict amount if the decision was against the radiologist. This emphasis on the abbreviated information made available is important for an understanding of the meaning of the relative frequency of the various causes of each case. There may have been subsidiary issues informing the claims but our conclusions were based on what we had, the primary allegations which for the most part, constituted the motive for which the patient or the patient’s family sought redress by instituting a lawsuit.