REVEALED: The US states where doctors are most likely to bungle your surgery

If you don't want to end up botched, you may want to think twice before booking surgery in New York.
That's according to a DailyMail.com analysis of a database that tracks medical malpractice settlements, which found the Empire State had the most settlements in the US per healthcare provider, which includes doctors, nurses, pharmacists and physician associates — about double the national average.
Analyzing more than 1million claims filed from 2004 to 2024, the analysis showed the US had an overall rate of about 313 payments per 1,000 providers, with an average of $313,000 paid out for each lawsuit that was settled.
In New York, however, the rate was double that at 663 payments per 1,000 practitioners, with an average of $408,000 paid out per settlement.
Among the most expensive was the $120million paid in 2023 to 41-year-old Lee Williams, a commercial real estate broker who now lives with permanent brain damage after doctors allegedly failed to swiftly diagnose his stroke.
Medical malpractice is when a healthcare professional fails to provide appropriate treatment, takes an improper action or gives substandard care. This often results in serious injury and long-term harm to patients, such as serious brain damage or the loss of a limb.
The data did not reveal details of the malpractice claims or an explanation for the rates, but major cities — such as New York — tend to have a greater number of hospitals and healthcare workers that are willing to take on more complicated cases where there may be a higher risk of treatment error.
Specifically, New York — which has the most practicing doctors and healthcare workers, at 35,000 — is also one of 21 states that does not cap the level of payment for medical malpractice claims, according to attorneys Miler and Zois, which may encourage more patients to file lawsuits seeking a settlement.
The higher number of payment reports in New York could also be due to its legal framework, attorneys suggest, which tends to favor patients.
Following New York was Pennsylvania with about 503 medical malpractice settlements per 1,000 healthcare providers — and an average payout of $376,000.
New Mexico was third with 442 settlements per 1,000 providers, and an average payment of $295,000 per report.
New Jersey came in fourth — at about 418 settlements per 1,000 practitioners — and an average of $386,000 payments per patient.
And Florida was fifth, with 405 per 1,000 providers — and about $255,000 per payment on average.
The state with the lowest rate of medical malpractice settlements was Alabama, where there were 86 medical malpractice claims per 1,000 healthcare workers. North Dakota was second from bottom, at 113 per 1,000, and Minnesota had the third-lowest rate, at 124 per 1,000.
The data did not reveal the reason for filing the cases, but a 2020 survey suggested the most common reason is misdiagnosis, which can delay vital care for patients, potentially leading to harms.
According to the report from Standards of Care — which campaigns for quality healthcare in the US — this accounted for 32 percent of medical malpractice claims.
Botched surgery or procedures where mistakes were made were the second most common, with about 25 percent of cases.
Details on specific cases were not included in the database but there have been plenty of high-profile cases during the years analyzed.
In 2024, a lawsuit was filed against Florida doctor Berto Lopez over claims he accidentally cut off the head of a newborn baby's penis during a circumcision.
And in November 2023, patient Peter Wang was awarded a payment of $7million after he claimed an ophthalmologist misdiagnosed an infection in his left eye, leading him to go blind in the eye and eventually requiring surgery to remove it.
In a record case from Pennsylvania in June last year, $183million was awarded to the family of a child born at a local hospital after they claimed the baby suffered severe brain injuries during birth from being deprived of oxygen.
And so far this year, in New York state a 65-year-old man received a $60million payout after a routine epidural injection allegedly left him permanently paralyzed and a woman received $7million after she claimed to be left with significant pain following hip surgery.
For the analysis, DailyMail.com extracted data from the National Practitioner Data Bank — a database run by the Department of Health and Human Services that tracks medical malpractice claims in the US.
This records all medical malpractice payments made by providers and entities — such as hospitals and clinics — in the US.
It records all payments made by these bodies whether in court or due to out-of-court settlements.
But it may not record all cases where payments related to medical malpractice are made by an individual, such as a doctor.
Data on the total number of medical malpractice payments made from 2004 to 2024 was extracted, as well as the total number of active providers in each state.
This was analyzed to calculate the rate of medical malpractice claims per 1,000 practitioners per state.
The database also tracks the total amount paid out over medical malpractice claims, finding New York also had the highest total pay outs over the two decades tracked — at $14billion.
Next was Pennsylvania, with $7billion, and third was Florida, with $6billion. California was fourth at $5billion.

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But when their fingers were wrinkled, they could transfer the submerged marbles and weights 12% quicker than when their fingers were wet and unwrinkled. Interestingly, there was no difference in transferring the dry objects with wrinkled or unwrinkled fingers. There are other baffling mysteries – women take longer to develop wrinkles than men do Some scientists have suggested that the wrinkles on our fingertips and toes may act like rain treads on tyres or the soles of shoes. The channels produced by the wrinkles help to squeeze water away from the point of contact between the fingers and an object. This suggests that humans may have evolved fingertip and toe wrinkling at some point in our past to help us grip wet objects and surfaces. 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And why exactly does our skin return to its normal state – normally after 10-20 minutes – if there is no clear disadvantage to our grip on dry objects of having wrinkly fingertips? Surely if having wrinkly fingers can improve our grip in the wet, but not harm it when dry, why would our fingertips not be permanently wrinkly? One reason for that could be the change in sensation the wrinkling also causes. Our fingertips are packed with nerves, and the pruning of our skin changes the way we feel things we touch (although one study has shown it does not affect our ability to discriminate between objects based on touch). "Some people have a real aversion to it because picking something up with wrinkly fingers feels weird," says Davis. "It could be because the balance of skin receptors have changed position, but there could be a psychological dimension too. It would be fun to investigate why. There could be other things we can do less well with wrinkly fingers." But the wrinkling of our fingers and toes in water can reveal key information about our health in surprising ways too. Wrinkles take longer to form in people with skin conditions like psoriasis and vitiligo, for example. Patients with cystic fibrosis experience excessive wrinkling of their palms as well as their fingers, and this has even been noticed in people who are genetic carriers of the disease. Patients suffering from type 2 diabetes also sometimes show markedly decreased levels of skin wrinkling when their hands are placed in water. Similarly reduced wrinkling has been seen in people who have suffered heart failure, perhaps due to some disruption in the control of their cardiovascular system. Unsymmetrical wrinkling of the fingers – where one hand wrinkles less than the other despite the same immersion time – has even been suggested as an early sign of Parkinson's disease as it indicates the sympathetic nervous system is not functioning correctly on one side of the body. So, while the question of why our fingers and toes began wrinkling in water in the first place remains open, our pruney digits are proving useful to doctors in other surprising ways. * This article was originally published on 21 June 2022. It was updated on 19 June 2025 to include details of a new study on the repeatability of wrinkle patterns on wet fingers. -- If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.