Midwives and malpractice

Amy Tuteur points out that midwives will soon undergo the same malpractice pressures as OBs:

In that year, there were 459 monetary judgments against CNMs. There were many more malpractice suits, but 459 resulted in a win for the plaintiff and payment of money. The average payout for a strictly obsetrics related claim was approximately $532,000. It is difficult to interpret the information for the size of monetary damages because the CNM results are lumped together with the results for labor and delivery nurses. In comparison, obstetricians had 1361 claims with an average payout of approximately $505,000.