Florida counts medical malpractice from both ends of a claim's life. The courts count the lawsuits: the Office of the State Courts Administrator publishes filings and dispositions by case type, month by month, and "Malpractice – Medical" is its own line. The insurance regulator counts the money: every insurer and self-insurer must report each closed claim to the Office of Insurance Regulation, and OIR publishes an annual analysis of the closed-claim database by statute. This article sets out what the most recent reports show, the statutory presuit process that sits in front of the court numbers, and the federal data that complements them. Every figure is from a linked public source; where a figure could not be sourced, it is not here.
The statewide filings table for fiscal year 2024-25 (July 2024 through June 2025) lists 1,157 medical malpractice filings in circuit civil, between 76 and 122 a month. Alongside them were 143 business malpractice and 251 other professional malpractice filings, 1,551 professional malpractice cases in all. Dispositions of medical malpractice cases in the same year were 1,331, so the courts closed 174 more malpractice cases than they opened. Total circuit civil filings were 158,861 and dispositions 193,172; medical malpractice was 0.7 percent of the civil docket by count.
The guide reports jury trial rates and clearance rates by circuit, but for circuit civil as a whole, not by case type. The Eleventh Circuit (Miami-Dade) disposed of 138 circuit civil cases by jury out of 30,546, the Seventeenth (Broward) 194 of 21,526, the Fifteenth (Palm Beach) 100 of 14,208; no circuit's jury trial rate exceeded 0.9 percent. Medical malpractice filings by circuit are not broken out in the chapter, and this article does not estimate them.
One structural point before comparing the two series. A Florida lawsuit is filed only after the presuit process described below, and the OIR closed-claim count includes claims that were resolved in presuit or never became lawsuits at all. The 1,157 filings and the 3,340 closed claims are different populations.
OIR's report states that "in 2024, the Florida medical malpractice insurance companies reported 3,340 closed claims in Florida," 1,710 filed by males and 1,630 by females, down from 3,651 in 2022. The system's reporting form has 72 fields; the report analyzes about 25 of them. OIR is direct about the limits: the data "does not include 'open' claims or the entire universe of outstanding claims," and "trends in either the amount of time to close a claim or in the amount of claim payments cannot be systematically evaluated." The report also notes that a closed claim "does not mean that the plaintiff received payment."
The financial aggregation for all claims closed in 2024: $1,576,832,498 in indemnity paid, $191,683,478 in loss adjustment expense paid to defense counsel, and $48,883,439 in other loss adjustment expense, a total of $1,817,399,415, "up 25.4% from 2023." That is the amount paid "over the lifetime of the claims closed in 2024," not the amount paid during 2024. "In many instances, (approximately 30.9% of the time) the claims closed showed indemnity payments of $0 to the plaintiff."
Where insurers reported the split, non-economic loss was $347,436,702 and combined incurred and anticipated economic loss $243,139,827; but those fields were completed on claims representing only 37.45 percent of the total loss paid, so the report warns that year-to-year comparisons "may be distorted." Most claims settle for a flat sum with no allocation, and "companies may estimate these numbers to complete the report."
By injury location, 1,591 of the 3,340 claims closed in 2024 arose in a hospital inpatient facility, 391 in a physician's office, 377 in an emergency room, 218 in another hospital or institution, 189 in another outpatient facility, 113 in a hospital outpatient facility, 100 in a nursing home, 24 in the patient's home and 10 in a prison; inpatient, office and ER together were "roughly 70.6% of all claims closed in 2024."
By severity, the largest category was death: 1,193 claims, "35.7% of all the claims closed in 2024 (up from 30.3% in 2023)." The next largest were minor infections and missed fractures (494), damage to organs or loss of a finger (387), major burns and drug reactions (354), deafness, loss of limb or loss of an eye (339), paraplegia and blindness (217), and quadriplegia and brain damage (137). Emotional-only claims were 127.
By county of the insured's residence, the top ten for 2024 were Dade (360), Palm Beach (326), Hillsborough (322), Broward (297), Duval (201), Orange (198), Pinellas (189), out of state (184), Pasco (87) and St. Lucie (86). "Fifteen (15) Florida counties had no closed claims reported through the closed claim reporting system during 2024." Among reporting entities, 268 reported closed claims, 145 of them only one or two, and 54 reported ten or more; the largest single reporter, Health Care Indemnity, Inc., reported 496, and the public hospital systems appear on the list, with the Public Health Trust of Miami-Dade County at 43, North Broward Hospital District at 30 and South Broward Hospital District at 22.
Timing. For all claims closed in 2024, "the total number of days between occurrence and final disposition averaged 1,481 days (4.1 years) with a range from 292 days (0.8 years) to disposition to a maximum of 3,843 days (10.5 years)." For the 33 leading carriers, the average from occurrence to claim filing was 462 days and from filing to closing 823 days.
Payment rates. Among the leading carriers, the share of closed claims with an indemnity payment ranged widely: The Doctors Company 165 of 272 (60.7 percent), The Medical Protective Company 105 of 175 (60.0 percent), MAG Mutual 140 of 222 (63.1 percent), National Fire & Marine 106 of 132 (80.3 percent), NORCAL 108 of 138 (78.3 percent).
The market behind the claims. Florida was "the second largest state for physicians' malpractice premium, with $541 million in 2024 direct written premium." OIR resolved 92 rate filings in 2024, and "the average rate change for a Florida physician as a result of approved rate filings resolved in 2024 was +5.7%." In OIR's limited-scope comparison, Florida physician rates "were the highest among top 10 states" in all eight examples priced. The report notes that physicians "for the most part, purchase statutorily required $250,000 limits of insurance or somewhat higher limits of $500,000 and $1 million." On the law, OIR states that "no bills relating directly to medical malpractice were passed during the 2024 legislative session" and "no court decisions of the magnitude of the McCall or Kalitan cases were made recently."
OIR's database counts claims reported by insurers and self-insurers; the National Practitioner Data Bank counts payments made on behalf of individual practitioners. Its Public Use Data File is de-identified and refreshed quarterly, and the Data Analysis Tool filters by state and profession and exports to CSV. This article does not quote Florida totals from the NPDB because they are generated interactively; pull them yourself and record the date and settings. A hospital payment with no practitioner named is not in the NPDB, and NPDB and OIR counts will not match because they count different things over different periods. The NPDB reporting guide explains what triggers a report.
Aggregate data does not value a case. What it does is describe the system a Florida claim moves through, and three features of that system are visible in the 2025 reports.
First, the expert opinion comes before everything. Florida requires a verified written medical expert opinion at the moment notice is mailed, and that opinion is discoverable. The record has to have been read, and read well, before the presuit clock starts, because the 90-day window is the defendant's investigation period, not the plaintiff's.
Second, most claims never become the 1,157 lawsuits. Three closed claims for every filed case, a 30.9 percent no-payment rate, a defendant's statutory options of rejection, settlement or admitted-liability arbitration: the presuit exchange is where a large share of Florida claims are decided, on the strength of the two sides' expert opinions and the records behind them.
Third, the claims that do pay are severe and slow. Death is more than a third of closed claims, the average claim takes over four years from occurrence to disposition, and a case that survives presuit is, by selection, one where the record supported the opinion.
All of that starts with the record. The Case Analysis tool reads the medical record and the intake facts, identifies the standard-of-care questions at each decision point with the page cited, and organizes them in the form a medical expert needs to decide whether a verified opinion can be signed. It does not predict how a claim will resolve; the numbers above are the closest anyone can get to that, and they are averages over thousands of claims that are nothing like yours.
The Office of the State Courts Administrator's FY 2024-25 Statistical Reference Guide lists 1,157 medical malpractice filings in circuit civil for July 2024 through June 2025, and 1,331 dispositions. Filings correspond to each complaint filed, so this counts lawsuits, not presuit claims.
The Office of Insurance Regulation's October 1, 2025 report states that Florida medical malpractice insurers reported 3,340 closed claims in 2024, down from 3,651 in 2022. About 30.9 percent of closed claims showed no indemnity payment to the plaintiff.
For all claims closed in 2024, OIR reports $1,576,832,498 in indemnity paid, plus $191,683,478 in loss adjustment expense paid to defense counsel and $48,883,439 in other loss adjustment expense, a total of $1,817,399,415, up 25.4 percent from 2023. Those are lifetime payments on claims closed in 2024, not payments made during 2024.
Under section 766.203(2), the claimant must investigate and obtain a verified written medical expert opinion corroborating reasonable grounds before mailing a notice of intent under section 766.106. A suit may not be filed for 90 days after notice is delivered, during which the defendant must reject the claim, offer settlement, or offer arbitration with liability admitted. The limitation period is tolled during the 90 days.
Section 766.118 still sets out non-economic damages limits, but the Florida Supreme Court struck the wrongful-death cap in 2014 and the personal-injury cap in 2017, and no enforceable cap applies as of 2026. OIR's 2025 report notes that no court decisions of the magnitude of those cases have been made recently.
Section 95.11(5)(c) requires the action to be commenced within 2 years from when the incident occurred or was or should have been discovered, and in no event later than 4 years from the incident, extended to 7 years where fraud or concealment prevented discovery. The 4-year period does not bar an action brought on behalf of a minor by the child's eighth birthday.
Case Analysis reads the record and the intake facts, flags the standard-of-care questions at each decision point with the page cited, and organizes them in the form a medical expert needs for a verified opinion. Free to start.
Open Case Analysis →Sources. Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator, FY 2024-25 Statistical Reference Guide, Chapter 4: Circuit Civil (Overview; Circuit Civil Filings and Dispositions, Statewide by Category/Case Type and Month; Jury Trial Rates by Circuit; Clearance Rates by Circuit). Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, Medical Malpractice Financial Information: Closed Claim Database and Rate Filings, Annual Report, October 1, 2025 (Executive Summary; Purpose and Scope; Recent Medical Malpractice Legislation; Medical Malpractice Insurance Claims in Florida; Closed Claims of Leading Carriers in Florida; quoted). Florida Statutes 766.106, 766.203, 766.102, 766.118 and 95.11 (quoted). National Practitioner Data Bank, Public Use Data File and Data Analysis Tool. Percentages in the text are computed from the reports' own counts and are rounded. No NPDB state totals are quoted because they are generated interactively; no figures from law-firm or insurance marketing pages are used.
MedLegal AI is software, not a law firm. This article is general information for attorneys, paralegals, legal nurse consultants and patients; it is not legal or medical advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Verify every statute, rule and figure against the current source before relying on it. Questions: [email protected]