Medical Malpractice vs. Medical Negligence: What’s The Difference, And Why Is It Important To Know?

As personal injury attorneys, it’s vital for us to be intimately familiar with the literary terms syntax and semantics – two concepts that guide us in using language precisely and choosing exactly the right words when we write legal opinions, interpret the law, and make persuasive arguments to help our clients win their personal injury cases.

That’s why we wanted to take this opportunity to help you understand some vital differences between two other similar-sounding, but actually quite different, legal terms that could result in personal injury litigation. Because, while we hope you’ll never become a victim of either medical malpractice or medical negligence in a healthcare setting, we believe it’s important for you to know more about each of these dangerous circumstances and what they could mean to you personally.

What Is Negligence In A Medical Setting?

As usual, the helpful legal minds at Cornell University Law School offer readers a clear and concise definition of negligence:

“Negligence is the failure to behave with the level of care that a reasonable personwould have exercised under the same circumstances. Either a person’s actions or omissionsof actions can be found negligent. The omission of actions is considered negligent only when the person had a duty to act.”

To put this in layman’s terms, health care providers can be found negligent in medical settings when they go outside usual and customary accepted treatments by either providing care that hasn’t been proven to be effective or by failing to provide proper patient care. Similarly, accidentally hurting someone in a hospital or clinic could be called negligent (rather than being labeled as malpractice) since accidents are typically not intentional or repeated actions.

Let’s consider, for example, a nursing home setting where the staff members take medical care into their own hands by either ignoring a doctor’s orders or by providing unsound treatments to patients without first seeking permission or obtaining medical supervision. Either of these actions would likely represent failure to “behave with the level of care that a reasonable person would have exercised.” Along those same lines, if a clinician or medical assistant administers an incorrect injection or gives a patient the wrong prescription one time, it’s likely to be categorized as negligence rather than malpractice (which we’ll discuss in a moment) because it doesn’t represent an egregious pattern of bad behavior.

On the other side of the coin, if in the same nursing home staff members fail to change bed linens or to regularly move bedridden patients (which could result in bedsores), or if they neglect to provide assistance for patients who need to be helped to relieve themselves, their negligent behavior would fall under the “omissions of actions” category.

For a much more comprehensive look at the legal concept of negligence, which can take several different forms, check out this article which defines four key elements that are required to legally prove a healthcare provider has been negligent: 1) they must have a duty to provide care, 2) they have breached that required duty, 3) there is clear proof that the provider actually caused the injury, and 4) you were the person who suffered damages or injury caused by that provider.

What Is Medical Malpractice?

Malpractice can actually be considered a specialized type of negligence, which is probably most familiar to people when it occurs in medical situations. However, professionals in other fields (even lawyers!) can also be accused of malpractice.

Going back to Cornell Law School’s handy legal dictionary, “Malpractice is a tort committed when a professional breaches their duty to a client.” The word “tort” means an action or omission that results in injury or some other harm to a client to whom the professional owes a duty of care. Your primary care doctor definitely owes you “duty of care.” So do any doctors and nurses assigned to provide you with treatments or to conduct surgeries in a clinic or hospital setting. However, if you don’t have an established relationship with a given physician, he or she doesn’t legally owe you a duty of care. For further reading, a more comprehensive description of medical malpractice and its history dating back to ancient Roman times can be found here, courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

So if your personal doctor has failed to provide you with appropriate treatment, or has treated you improperly, and you suffer a proven injury resulting from those actions (or inactions), it’s likely a malpractice lawsuit can be initiated on your behalf. In Michigan, medical malpractice awards are limited by state law to a cap that varies annually based on inflation. For 2025, the maximum award for medical malpractice lawsuits is capped at $615,800, but that amount can rise to as much as $1.047 million for victims of certain permanent disabilities caused by malpractice (such as those that might require lifelong care). However, in some cases, awards given by Michigan juries have far surpassed those limits.

At this point, it may seem like the difference between medical malpractice and medical negligence is still a bit muddy, but know that our dedicated team of malpractice attorneys can help you assess your particular situation without any cost or obligation to help you decide how best to proceed if you feel you’ve been harmed by someone who failed in their duty of care to provide you with appropriate and professional medical treatment.

Whether You’ve Been Harmed By Negligence Or Malpractice, There’s Just One Place To Get The Help You Need To Make Things Right

Indeed, depending upon your specific circumstances, you might have been the victim of either medical negligence, medical malpractice, or perhaps even both, as this article from GoodRX explains. Also, as we discussed here recently, even if you’ve signed a waiver of liability, that doesn’t necessarily excuse medical practitioners or health care organizations from providing you with proper care and acting in a professional manner. As you might imagine having read this article, medical negligence and malpractice cases demand a high level of legal expertise – not to mention the ability to understand medical records, the experience to find the right expert witnesses who can interpret what happened, and the wherewithal to persuade judges and juries to award victims the compensation they genuinely deserve for the pain and suffering they have experienced. We are well equipped to be at your side – and on your side – throughout this complicated legal process. But remember that there’s typically a two-year statute of limitations for filing malpractice lawsuits in Michigan. So don’t wait too long to contact us. Call 855-MIKE-WINS (855-645-3946) to get us working on your case as quickly as possible. Remember, thanks to our helpful contingency fee arrangement, it will never cost you a penny out of pocket!

Content checked by Mike Morse, personal injury attorney with Mike Morse Injury Law Firm. Mike Morse is the founder of Mike Morse Law Firm, the largest personal injury law firm in Michigan. Since being founded in 1995, Mike Morse Law Firm has grown to over 200 employees, served 40,000 clients, and collected more than $1.5 billion for victims of auto, truck and motorcycle accidents. The main office is in Southfield, MI but you can also find us in Detroit, Sterling Heights and many other locations.