The patient safety movement represents a significant success for medical malpractice lawsuits. The movement demonstrates that important groups within organized medicine have accepted the fact that there is a patient safety problem.

Medical malpractice lawsuits also promote patient safety through less visible changes in health-care organizations. Lawsuits identify dangerous conditions and risky practices, providing the opportunity to improve those conditions and practices and, sometimes, energizing government agencies to discipline doctors or order hospitals to take corrective action.

Malpractice lawsuits also provide an incentive for doctors and hospitals to avoid injuries. Because so few patients sue, lawsuits almost certainly do not provide as strong an incentive as might be needed. Nevertheless there is good evidence that malpractice lawsuits and malpractice insurance premiums do motivate health-care providers to improve their safety record.

Finally, medical malpractice lawsuits have put liability insurance companies into the medical injury-prevention business, especially for their hospital and institutional customers. Malpractice insurance companies do two main things to promote patient safety. First, they provide patient safety training to their customers. Second, they look into hospitals' patient safety practices when they decide whether to offer insurance, and at what price. They consider the hospital's claim records, whether the hospital has a risk management department, what kinds of safety training are provided to hospital workers, and whether the hospital has adopted all the safety measures that hospital accreditation organizations recommend. Knowing that insurance companies care about these things provides an added incentive for hospitals to do them.