New York publishes less about medical malpractice claims than most large states. There is no patient compensation fund with an annual report, no insurance-regulator closed-claim analysis like Florida's, and no court table of filings and verdicts like Pennsylvania's. What exists is scattered: a case-type field on every civil filing, an interactive court dashboard, a Health Department office that receives every malpractice claim report by statute, a city comptroller who counts claims against the public hospital system, and actuarial reports on a birth-injury fund. This article sets out each source, what it actually says, and the statutes that shape the numbers. Every figure is from a linked public source; where New York publishes nothing, this article says so.
What is missing from that list is a statewide count of malpractice claims or payments by year in a fixed, citable document. New York does not publish one. Figures that circulate for "New York malpractice payouts" are almost always derived from the federal NPDB, and this article treats them that way.
Every Supreme Court civil action that needs a judge gets a Request for Judicial Intervention, and form UCS-840 requires the filer to check a case type. Under "Torts" the form lists "Medical, Dental or Podiatric Malpractice" as its own box, separate from "Other Professional Malpractice." The form also has a box for the "Notice of Medical, Dental or Podiatric Malpractice" with a field for the date issue was joined. That notice is the mechanism of 22 NYCRR 202.56(a)(1): "within 60 days after joinder of issue by all defendants named in the complaint in an action for medical, dental or podiatric malpractice," the plaintiff "shall obtain an index number and file a notice of such medical, dental or podiatric malpractice action" with proof of service, proof that record authorizations were served, the pleadings "including the certificate of merit if required by CPLR 3012-a," and the bill of particulars if served. Filing the notice is what assigns the case to a judge and starts the malpractice-specific case management track.
Because the case type is coded on every RJI, the court system can count malpractice cases, and its Caseload Trends Dashboard lets the public do so: it "includes counts of filings, dispositions, pending cases, and trials commenced for all state-paid trial courts," from 2019, filterable by court and case type. The dashboard is interactive, so this article does not quote a number from it; run it with Supreme Court Civil and the malpractice case type selected, and record the date. The New York procedure guide covers the case management rules that follow the notice.
The one statewide channel that receives every New York malpractice claim is a licensing channel. The OPMC annual report states: "State Insurance Law § 315 mandates the reporting of any claim filed for medical malpractice against a physician, physician assistant or specialist assistant, and the disposition of that claim, to be reported to the Commissioner of Health and the Superintendent of Insurance." OPMC "collects and maintains reports of medical malpractice claims filed in New York State and their dispositions," and under Public Health Law section 230 it reviews "the licensee's malpractice history, the number and dollar amount of any payouts made, and current malpractice insurance status when determining whether to open an investigation."
The report does not publish the claim counts it receives. What it publishes is its own activity: OPMC "received 8,588 complaints and closed 8,662 complaints" in 2023, against 8,841 in 2021 and 9,303 in 2022; about 49 percent of 2023 complaints came from the public; and "of the 37 investigations completed in 2023 that were based on medical malpractice criteria, four investigations (eleven percent) resulted in a Board action or Administrative Warning." That is the whole of what the state's malpractice-claim database discloses publicly: thirty-seven investigations opened on malpractice history, four with a result.
The most detailed published malpractice claim counts in New York cover one defendant: the city's public hospital system. The Comptroller's Annual Claims Report for fiscal year 2023 states that "there were 398 medical malpractice claims filed, down 10 percent from the 441 medical malpractice claims filed in FY 2022, and down 37 percent from the 629 claims filed in FY 2015." Those 398 were 66 percent of the 600 claims of all kinds filed against Health + Hospitals in the year. "The 64 medical malpractice claims resolved in FY 2023 cost the City $51.5 million, compared to $81.1 million paid out on 103 medical malpractice claims settled in FY 2022." The report explains why it leads with counts rather than dollars: "since medical malpractice claims are complex, the cases often take five to ten years to resolve," so "the number of claims filed is, therefore, a better indicator of medical malpractice claims activity than the dollar amount paid out in any single year."
The report goes down to the hospital. Claims filed against the eleven acute care hospitals fell "to 347 in FY 2023 from 401 claims filed in FY 2022," and Table 4 lists each one: Bellevue with 48 claims filed and 7 resolved for $4.1 million, Coney Island 40 filed and 1 resolved for $2.0 million, Elmhurst 35 filed and 6 resolved for $3.6 million, Harlem 26 filed and 3 resolved for $4.5 million, and so on. Of the tort claims the city resolved for $1 million or more in the year, 14 were medical malpractice claims. This is a single-defendant series and cannot be scaled to the state, but it is the only New York source that reports claims filed, claims resolved and dollars paid side by side, year over year, from the defendant's own ledger.
The Department of Financial Services publishes the section 315 reporting instructions to insurers, which require quarterly reports of cancelled, non-renewed and surcharged malpractice policies, each flagged for "quality of care" concerns or professional misconduct actions. Aggregate claim results from those filings are not published on the DFS pages we reviewed.
The Health Department's Medical Indemnity Fund is narrower still. It pays the future health costs of plaintiffs "in medical malpractice actions who have received either court-approved settlements or judgments deeming the plaintiffs' neurological impairments to be birth-related," and the Department posts quarterly actuarial analyses of the fund, most recently for the fourth quarter of 2024, published March 2025. Those reports concern one category of injury and the fund's liabilities, not the state's claims.
For statewide payment figures, the federal data is the only public source. The National Practitioner Data Bank's Public Use Data File holds de-identified malpractice payment reports made on behalf of individual practitioners, refreshed quarterly, and the Data Analysis Tool filters by state and profession and exports to CSV. This article does not quote New York totals from the NPDB because they are generated interactively and there is no fixed page to cite; pull them yourself and record the date and settings. Two cautions apply with particular force in New York: a payment by a hospital on its own behalf, with no practitioner named, is not reported, and the city's own figures above show how much of New York's malpractice exposure sits with institutional defendants; and NPDB reports are dated by payment, years after the claim was filed. The NPDB reporting guide explains what triggers a report.
Aggregate data does not value a case, and in New York there is less of it to misuse. What the sources do show is the shape of the system.
First, the physician consultation comes first. CPLR 3012-a requires the attorney to have consulted a knowledgeable physician and concluded there is a reasonable basis before the complaint is served, or within ninety days where the limitation period forces the filing. With two years and six months from the act, or from the last continuous treatment, the record review that supports that consultation is often the first thing that happens in the case and the thing the deadline is measured against.
Second, the clock is short and the case is long. The city's report says its malpractice claims "often take five to ten years to resolve"; the 64 claims it resolved in fiscal 2023 were filed years earlier. A chronology built at intake has to survive that long, in the hands of experts who were not there when it was made.
Third, the money is not in the public record. New York does not publish claim payments, the licensing channel that receives them does not disclose them, and the federal file omits institutional payments. Anyone quoting a statewide average settlement for New York is quoting the NPDB or an estimate; ask which.
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 consulting physician needs to decide whether there is a reasonable basis. It does not predict how a case will resolve; the sources above are the closest anyone can get to that, and they describe thousands of cases that are nothing like yours.
New York does not publish a fixed statewide count. The court system's Caseload Trends Dashboard can produce filings and dispositions for the Medical, Dental or Podiatric Malpractice case type from 2019, but it is interactive and the figures change with each refresh. The most detailed published counts cover one defendant, NYC Health + Hospitals, with 398 malpractice claims filed in fiscal year 2023.
Not in aggregate. Insurance Law section 315 requires every malpractice claim against a physician, physician assistant or specialist assistant, and its disposition, to be reported to the Commissioner of Health and the Superintendent of Insurance, but the Office of Professional Medical Conduct uses those reports for licensing review and does not publish claim counts or payments. Statewide payment figures come from the federal National Practitioner Data Bank.
The Comptroller's Annual Claims Report for fiscal year 2023 states that 64 medical malpractice claims resolved in FY 2023 cost the City $51.5 million, compared with $81.1 million on 103 claims in FY 2022. There were 398 malpractice claims filed against Health + Hospitals in FY 2023, down from 441 in FY 2022 and 629 in FY 2015.
CPLR 214-a requires the action to be commenced within two years and six months of the act, omission or failure, or of the last treatment where there is continuous treatment for the same condition. A foreign-object claim may be brought within one year of discovery. A claim for negligent failure to diagnose cancer may be brought within two years and six months of when the patient knew or should have known of the negligence and injury, but no later than seven years from the act.
Yes. CPLR 3012-a requires the complaint to be accompanied by a certificate executed by the plaintiff's attorney declaring that the attorney has consulted with at least one licensed physician the attorney reasonably believes is knowledgeable in the relevant issues and has concluded there is a reasonable basis for the action. If the limitation period would otherwise bar the action, the certificate may be filed within ninety days after service of the complaint. The section does not apply to a plaintiff who is not represented by an attorney.
No. New York has no statutory cap on compensatory damages in medical malpractice actions. Judiciary Law 474-a does limit the plaintiff's attorney's contingent fee to a sliding scale: 30 percent of the first $250,000 recovered, 25 percent of the next $250,000, 20 percent of the next $500,000, 15 percent of the next $250,000 and 10 percent of any amount over $1,250,000.
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 consulting physician needs. Free to start.
Open Case Analysis →Sources. New York State Unified Court System, State-Paid Trial Court Caseload Trends Dashboard; Request for Judicial Intervention, UCS-840; 22 NYCRR 202.56 (quoted). New York State Department of Health, Board for Professional Medical Conduct and Office of Professional Medical Conduct, 2023 Annual Report (quoted); Medical Indemnity Fund Actuarial Reports. Office of the New York City Comptroller, Annual Claims Report, Fiscal Year 2023 (April 2024; section on medical malpractice claims and Table 4; quoted). New York State Department of Financial Services, Professional Medical Malpractice Insurance Reporting Requirements Pursuant to § 315. New York Consolidated Laws, CPLR 214-a, CPLR 3012-a, Judiciary Law 474-a (quoted). National Practitioner Data Bank, Public Use Data File and Data Analysis Tool. Percentages in the text are the reports' own or computed from their counts and rounded. No NPDB or court-dashboard 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]