HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | AUGUST 24, 2026 25
Opinion & Commentary
By Megan E. Bryson
A
merican doctors appear
to face two seemingly
conflicting trends.
On the one hand, the frequency of
medical liability lawsuits is declining.
On the other, liability insurance
premiums are rising, a troubling sign,
especially for many smaller practices
throughout New England.
However, the real factor driving
the rise in liability
premiums is not the
frequency of the
lawsuits, but rather
increasingly high jury
awards. As these
trends continue, the
results will certainly be
felt by Connecticut residents and crit-
ical medical systems, eroding access
to healthcare as the unpredictability
of high-cost litigation puts indepen-
dent practices at risk.
The American Medical Association
has found that, since 2019, medical
liability premiums have been steadily
rising at rates not seen since the
early 2000s. Last year, nearly 40%
of doctors and medical practices
reported premium increases,
compared to 13.7% in 2018.
This trend is particularly
pronounced in fields such as obstet-
rics/gynecology and general surgery,
OTHER VOICES
Runaway verdicts in med-mal cases will hurt CT's most vulnerable
Megan E.
Bryson
practice areas that already face
higher-than-average premiums.
Many were puzzled by this report,
as it was released alongside a
second AMA report that found
that medical liability lawsuits were
declining in frequency.
In 2024, the AMA found that
1.8% of physicians were sued in
the previous year, a slight decrease
from the 2.3% of physicians sued in
2016. Furthermore, in 2024, 28.7% of
American physicians reported having
been sued at least once, compared to
34% in 2016.
Some fields of medicine are at
greater risk than others. Obstetrics,
which is generally viewed as a field
of greater risk of medical malpractice
lawsuits, incurs among the highest
insurance premiums, and 60% of
OBGYNs report having been sued at
least once.
Although malpractice claims have
declined, medical liability premiums
have risen. The reason is not the
number of lawsuits, but the growing
size of malpractice verdicts.
Jury awards in medical malprac-
tice cases have been rising steadily.
The Doctors Co., a California-based
medical malpractice coverage firm,
reported an astounding 67% increase
in medical malpractice jury verdicts
over $10 million between 2013
and 2023.
The rise in runaway verdicts can
itself be attributed to various factors,
including inflation and evolving
jury perspectives. However, as jury
awards have become oversized,
defendants have shown little appetite
to try and fight this trend through the
appellate process at further expense
and risk.
Rather, there is a growing reluc-
tance to even try cases, with many
providers and their insurers prefer-
ring to settle instead of risking an
excessive verdict at the expense of
protracted litigation.
This has led to a somewhat circular
problem. As reluctance grows to
try even winnable cases under
the threat of massive jury awards,
defensible cases are increasingly
settled at greater expense, while
nuclear verdicts continue to drive up
settlement costs.
Insurers have little choice but to
respond to this volatile legal cost
environment with rates reflective of
the added risk.
These issues will have significant
downstream effects on the nation
and the state of Connecticut. Small,
independent medical practices will
be forced to either close their doors
for good or join a larger hospital
system as insurance becomes
more unaffordable.
Continued consolidation of the
marketplace could be a cause of
concern in some corners of the
Nutmeg State, reducing patient
access to care.
Earlier this year, Access Health CT,
the state's official health insurance
marketplace, reported that about
one in every 11 Connecticut neigh-
borhoods is both a food and medical
desert, where a "lack of medical facil-
ities … undermine[s] healthy choices
and health outcomes."
This healthcare consolidation may
also worsen the insurance outlook.
Concentrating all the risk with one or
a handful of community-based facil-
ities simply means that fewer hospi-
tals will have to absorb premiums for
numerous practitioners under their
umbrella. The more these practices
are stretched, the more risk there is
to worry about, potentially pulling
focus from meeting the highest
standard of patient care.
Tort reform has long been dead on
arrival in Hartford and many other
state capitals, but unless these
compounding issues are addressed,
the hardening insurance market
will continue to add stress to our
medical system until finally reaching
a tipping point.
Megan E. Bryson is managing
partner at law firm Coffey Modica
LLP, where she heads the firm's
Westport office.
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