August 2026 Newsletter - Protect Patients Now

Who is liable when AI makes the diagnosis?

As artificial intelligence takes on a bigger role in diagnosing and treating patients, the medical liability system faces a question it isn’t yet ready to answer: who is responsible if a joint human-AI decision is wrong?

A team of physicians and legal scholars published an analysis and warning in the journal Nature that as AI moves from simple assistance toward systems that make diagnoses and treatment decisions with little human oversight, “existing medical-liability frameworks do not address this crossover point.” Because these systems often rely on opaque “black-box” reasoning physicians cannot fully retrace, courts may struggle to tell whether a bad outcome reflects a clinician’s error, a flawed algorithm, or a procedure’s inherent risk.

The authors warn hospitals may avoid useful AI tools altogether out of fear of legal exposure — a concern already “repeatedly cited by physicians as a barrier to safe AI adoption,” per the AMA’s 2026 Physician Survey on Augmented Intelligence. The reality is that AI providers may have little incentive to monitor a tool’s safety once it is adopted.

The authors propose a seven-level liability framework, modeled on aviation and self-driving-car regulation, to clarify accountability as AI’s role grows across patient care. Until such rules exist, physicians are left practicing in a liability system that lags behind the technology they use.

To read more about the proposed framework for governing medical liability in AI-assisted care, click here.

Connecticut patients and physicians paying the price

In Connecticut, a small number of outsized jury verdicts are driving up the cost of care, threatening access to care for the state’s most vulnerable patients.

Connecticut attorney Megan E. Bryson, managing partner at Coffey Modica LLP, points to data in a Hartford Business Journal op-ed showing the steep climb in medical liability premiums since 2019. The culprit, she writes, is verdict size. The Doctors Company, a leading liability insurer, found a 67% jump in jury verdicts over $10 million between 2013 and 2023, with obstetrics and general surgery among the hardest-hit specialties.

That volatility is changing how cases get resolved. Bryson describes “a somewhat circular problem” in which insurers and providers, unwilling to risk a runaway award at trial, settle otherwise defensible claims — a pattern that itself pushes costs higher. In Connecticut, she warns, the pressure could push small, independent practices that reach patients across the state to shut down or fold into larger hospital systems.

That consolidation carries real consequences for access. Bryson cites a recent Access Health CT finding that roughly one in 11 Connecticut neighborhoods is both a food and medical desert, where scarce facilities already limit health outcomes — gaps that further consolidation in the health care space risks widening.

Without affordable access to care, the communities with the fewest medical options are leaving patients most at risk. Read more here about the high price Connecticut patients are paying because of escalating liability payouts.

Doing the math on meritless liability claims

Most medical liability lawsuits filed each year never find a physician at fault, yet the cost of defending these cases falls squarely on doctors and, ultimately, their patients.

Writing in KevinMD, Howard Smith, MD, an obstetrics-gynecology physician, breaks down the numbers behind the nation’s medical liability system. Of the roughly 50,000 medical liability lawsuits filed against physicians each year, about 70%, or 35,000, have no merit, meaning they should never have been filed.

Smith writes that over his career he has paid approximately $1 million in liability insurance premiums, working out to roughly $200 a day, a cost he says he must pass on to patients. He has been sued five times, and in each case, no evidence of medical errors was found.

“Most doctors do not appreciate the impact malpractice has on them in this way,” Smith writes, urging colleagues to be proactive with their carriers before a claim is even filed.

The math illustrates a broader strain on the medical liability system: physicians are financing a steady stream of claims with little merit, and those costs are ultimately absorbed by patients through higher fees and reduced access to care.

Click here to read one physician’s breakdown of what meritless liability claims cost doctors and patients.