Glossary · Legal Concept
Payout Range
The Hooper Engine's low, expected, and high estimate of what a medical malpractice case will pay if it results in payment, adjusted to current dollars.
Also known as: predicted payout range, payout estimate, payout band
What it is
Payout range is the Hooper Engine's estimate of what a case will pay if it results in payment, expressed as three figures: a low, an expected, and a high value. The expected value is the midpoint of comparable outcomes; the low and high describe the realistic spread around it.
How to read it
Read the whole range, not just the midpoint. Cases rarely land exactly on the expected figure, and the distance between the low and high values shows how much room there is on either side. The figures are adjusted to current dollars, so a present-day case is compared against what similar cases pay now rather than years ago.
Why it matters
A single expected figure hides risk that a range makes visible. Two cases with the same expected payout can carry very different spreads, and the width of the range is often as important to a settlement decision as the midpoint itself.
See Also
- Payment Probability — The likelihood, expressed as a percentage, that a medical malpractice case with a given profile results in any payment; the first of the Hooper Engine's three core outputs and the signal for whether a claim is worth pursuing.
- Expected Value — The probability-weighted worth of a case before its outcome is known, found by multiplying payment probability by expected payout; the right figure for ranking cases at intake.
- Outcome Severity Distribution — The spread showing how comparable medical malpractice cases divide across small, significant, and large payments, used to gauge how volatile a case profile is; distinct from insurance "severity," which is average cost per claim.
- Hooper Engine — MedMalPredict's proprietary AI prediction system, trained on more than 270,000 historical medical malpractice cases, that produces jurisdiction-aware predictions for payment probability, payout range, and outcome severity.