"764 Claims, only 73 Approved"
Less Than 10%: What Military Medical Malpractice Claims Tell Us About Accountability
For decades, service members had virtually no recourse when medical negligence occurred within the military healthcare system.
The reason was simple: the Feres Doctrine.
Established by the Supreme Court in 1950, Feres prevents active-duty service members from suing the federal government for injuries that occur "incident to service." While civilians and military dependents could pursue medical malpractice claims, the service member themselves often could not, even when the negligence occurred in a hospital operating room thousands of miles from a battlefield.
In 2019, Congress took a small step toward addressing this problem by creating an administrative process that allows active-duty service members to seek compensation for military medical malpractice.
Many believed this would finally provide a measure of accountability.
The numbers tell a different story.
According to recent reporting, military service members have filed 764 medical malpractice claims since the program began. Of those claims, only 73 have been approved for compensation.
That is less than 10%.
Think about that for a moment.
Military medicine treats millions of service members every year. These claims are not people complaining because they did not like their doctor or because a procedure produced an imperfect outcome. These are individuals who believed the care they received fell below accepted medical standards and caused harm significant enough to pursue a formal claim against the Department of Defense/Department of War.
Yet more than 90% of claims have either been denied, dismissed, or remain unresolved.
That raises difficult questions.
Is military medicine remarkably free from negligence compared to every civilian healthcare system in America?
Or is the system designed in a way that still makes it extraordinarily difficult for injured service members to obtain compensation?
Many advocates suspect the answer is the latter.
Unlike a civilian malpractice lawsuit, these claims are reviewed internally by the Department of Defense/Department of War. There is no jury. There is no independent judge. There is no public courtroom. The same institution that provided the care is largely responsible for evaluating whether negligence occurred.
Even if every reviewer acts in good faith, the appearance of conflict is unavoidable.
For military families, this issue is not theoretical.
A missed diagnosis can change a life forever.
A surgical error can end a career.
A delayed referral can turn a treatable illness into a terminal one.
Many military families know these realities all too well.
My husband, Sgt. Jay Seals, spent years experiencing symptoms before being diagnosed with Stage IV stomach cancer. While every case is unique and not every negative medical outcome is malpractice, military families often find themselves asking the same question: Was something missed? Could more have been done? Would the outcome have been different if action had been taken sooner?
Those questions become even more frustrating when the system lacks transparency and accountability.
The purpose of malpractice systems is not to punish healthcare providers.
It is to identify mistakes, compensate those who were harmed, and improve patient safety so the same errors do not happen again.
Without accountability, improvement becomes much harder.
Congress deserves credit for creating a pathway that did not previously exist. Before 2019, many service members had no avenue at all to seek compensation for medical negligence.
But creating a pathway and creating an effective pathway are not the same thing.
If fewer than 10% of claims are being approved, lawmakers should be asking whether the process is functioning as intended. They should examine how claims are evaluated, how evidence is reviewed, how long decisions take, and whether independent oversight is needed.
Service members are expected to be accountable for their actions every day they wear the uniform.
The systems that serve them should be held to the same standard.
Military families deserve confidence that when medical mistakes occur, those mistakes will be honestly evaluated, transparently reviewed, and fairly addressed.
Accountability should not end at the Military hospital door.
