When medical providers are threatened with lawsuits, there are important steps they can take to protect their best interests. The below is intended to serve as a summary of best practices for physicians who have been threatened with a medical malpractice lawsuit.

It is not unusual for physicians to have liability claims filed against them. In fact, according to the American Medical Association’s “Policy Research Perspectives – Medical Liability Claim Frequency Among U.S. Physicians” (2017), more than one-third of all physicians have been sued at some point in their careers. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way health-care providers practice medicine. The prevalence of telehealth services, which increased significantly during the pandemic, implicates new concerns relating to privacy, security, and confidentiality. Further, communicating with a patient through videoconference can lead to challenges in diagnosing a patient’s condition due to the inability to physically examine the patient. Lindsay Lowe, “Uptick in Telehealth Reveals Medical Malpractice Concerns,” Bloomberg Law (Sept. 29, 2020). According to one recent analysis, of all telemedicine-related claims pursued over a four-year pre-pandemic period, two-thirds of those claims were related to diagnosis issues. Id.