In Oregon, medical malpractice is as big a problem as it is elsewhere - bigger than most people suspect. Harvard University completed an extensive study a few years back that determined that annually more than 80,000 people are fatal victims of medical malpractice in the United States. RAND corporate also completed a research project that studied autopsies as their source of medical malpractice information. This study said that 35 or 40 percent of the fatal or near-fatal deaths were the result of missed diagnosis.
What's really amazing, too, is that fewer than three percent of these medical malpractice situations are litigated. Victims and victims''families do not regularly seek legal redress, contrary to what the media and the medical industry would have us believe. To hear medical professionals tell it everyone is litigation crazy and medical malpractice cases are brought unwarranted and constantly. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Harvard' School of Public Health determined that of those patients who suffer negligence by a medical care professional, only one out of every eight follows through with a claim of medical malpractice and a lawsuit, and of those one in eight that do sue, only one in sixteen (exactly half) are able to recover any damages at all.
What' even more appalling, and what most patients do not know, is that the physician they choose may not even have malpractice insurance. Physicians are not required to purchase this medical malpractice coverage.
Nor does any state board of medical licensing oversee medical malpractice. Each year approximately 2000 physicians, with amounts to one third of one percent of all licensed doctors, are recipients of any kind of medical discipline. And this discipline is almost never for medical malpractice. The common wrist slappings are for fraud having to do with medical financial practices, or for substance abuse.
Source: www.consumerlaw.com/medical.html#general
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NW Marshall 
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