“ABC News” reported yesterday that the chances of hospital physicians facing malpractice claims are high.

The story stemmed from a new study published by “The New England Journal of Medicine” that found “almost every physician in the U.S. will face a malpractice claim during his or her career,” and that “while the risk of malpractice claims are high, nearly 80 percent of them don’t result in payments to plaintiffs.”

Research was conducted by Dr. Anupam Jena. After analyzing 14 years worth of malpractice data, based on physicians who all were covered by large malpractice insurance providers, his research concluded that “more than 75 percent of physicians in specialties have low malpractice risks and 99 percent of physicians in high-risk practices will be sued.”

“If you consider a doctor who is 30 years old and just starting a career and in a high-risk specialty, there is about a 100 percent chance that by the age of 65 he will have faced a claim,” said Dr. Jena, a patient care provider for Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “We find that across all specialties, the annual risk of a claim is substantial — 7.4 percent of all physicians had a malpractice claim every year during the study period.”

Cardiovascular and general surgeons as well as neurosurgeons are among those in physician services running the greatest risk of malpractice suits, with psychiatrists and pediatricians running the lowest.