Are you Starting a Small Teledentistry Company?

May 23, 2018

Teledentistry (Invisalign) Professional Liability Insurance

The Doctor’s Insurance Agency provides Medical Malpractice Professional Liability Insurance for Teledentistry Groups. While we treat each telemedicine practice as a custom risk, in the end, they all seem to be rated in a ‘pure risk’ fashion. Which is to say: the group projects the number of ‘consults’ or ‘reads’ and the premium is developed as a function of that regardless of the number of providers required to read or complete the contractual commitments of the Telemedicine group.

To get a quote, the Teledentistry Group will need to project the volume on Teledental consults by locale (we use a spreadsheet to break this out by State) since the premium costs vary from territory to territory. On the spreadsheet you can see what the underwriters are thinking and get an idea of the kind of information that the underwriters use in order to develop the premiums. Basically- who is on the roster, and how many reads they each do in a current policy year, in each state.

We’ve found that as the telemedicine roster grows, having a third aggregate policy limit of $5M or higher is an important consideration for groups who have large rosters that require this extra level of protection for the entity.

Pricing Overview:

Telemedicine Malpractice Insurance

 Policies seem to have a minimum premium of $ 5,000- $ 7,000 annually for limits of 1 Million per claim/ 3 Million in any one policy year total.

The approximate ‘price per consult’ is $ 1.00 -- $ 1.25 annual premium per consult for 1 Million / 3 Million policy with often no deductible. As the volume increases the ‘per consult’ premium goes down (at 150,000 consults, the premium would drop down to approximately .75 cents).

We use a Telemedicine Spreadsheet as a tool to communicate with the underwriters at application, and at any subsequent change to the group risk involving adding new physicians or expanding the current roster into new states. (They’ll adjust the premium mid-term only for new physician/state risks and based only on a recalculation of the current FTE’s & taxes, and only if it exceeds the policy minimum.)

These policies aren’t audited at the end of the year so no additional premium will apply, however at the policy period end, the underwriters require a renewal application for the entity (only) along with an updated spreadsheet showing projected reads by practitioner for each state covered.

Conditions that new dentists need to meet in order to be automatically cover

Teledentistry Groups are actively recruiting new dentists, there are 3 conditions needed to add each dentist to the blanket endorsement:

  1. Have had no more than three medical malpractice claims made against him or her
  2. Have had no claim paid or reserved in excess of $150,000 in indemnity
  3. Have had no board suspension, license probation, disciplinary action taken or felony conviction

Teledentistry is one method of getting low-income patients affordable dental care.