New research details how the threat of medical liability litigation hovers over physicians like a cloud and imposes rising costs on the nation’s health system.

More than one in three physicians, 34 percent, have had a medical liability lawsuit filed against them at some point in their careers, says one of three trend reports published by the AMA’s Division of Economic and Health Policy Research. The longer physicians are in practice, the likelier it is that they will have experienced a lawsuit.

My latest at AMA Wire. Read the whole shebang.