Medical facilities looking for Medical Professional Liability Insuranceshould be sure to choose a policy with a broad definition of insured!
The Doctors Insurance Agency is a national health care professional liability brokerage located in the San Francisco Bay area.
We focus on facility policies in the health care niche.
Facility policies can range from a single specialty medical group to multispecialty: surgeries, hospitalists, businesses focusing on a combination of telehealth and integrative wellness, weight loss, aesthetics and IV therapy.
We established these different niches because of the number of physicians we insure for medical professional liability insurance.
Underwriting by physician:
A lot of malpractice insurance companies underwrite their policies using the definitions provided by the American Board of Medical Specialties.
These policies are individually written with limits of insurance that follow the physician. These policy definitions are narrow (e.g. Internal Medicine, Orthopedic Surgery, Hyperbaric, Geriatric, etc.)
They insure all of the services and medical procedures provided by that individual physician.
Insuring by organization:
Alternately, professional facility policies have a broad definition of insured, considering the need for liability insurance for everyone
from the owners to the medical assistants. These policies include coverage for investors, as private equity has found its way into healthcare.
The private equity money exposes the directors making the decisions on behalf of the business. Officers and executives are all covered by a broad professional liability policy. Liability insurance for the facility includes the Medical director, so there's no need to purchase separate policies. Further, these policies importantly provide coverage for Medical Directors on a general basis.
Medical director is embedded in the definition, which gives the facility the flexibility to changing medical directors without triggering costly tail insurance premiums.
Essentially you're able to replace the medical director without incurring additional insurance costs.
Facility policies use a similar template, and this concept of insuring at the organizational level, and in a sort of inverse pyramid,
the scope of coverage can go all the way down the line, to include employees and allied medical personnel.
Recruiting becomes easier when you know that all of your health care providers are included in the policy without the need to purchase tail.
This structure makes it easier to recruit, because when a health care provider leaves, the insurance provided by these policies
continues without the need to purchase a separate tail policy.
Not having to purchase tail every time someone leaves might be the difference between success and struggle.
A facility policy puts the power to control the insurance in the owner’s hands. When the definition of the insured is broad, you do not need to worry about everyone fending for themselves, constantly re-upping and obtaining their own expensive insurance policies. The liability is written at the facility level in all of these categories, from Surgery Centers to hydrotherapy wellness centers.
All practitioners, technicians and Allied Medical Personnel are included in a per claim shared limit.
It is always possible to obtain a separate standalone limit of insurance to cover a medical director or medical doctor,
but knowing that the solution exists at the organizational level has helped hospitalist groups, emergency medical groups, radiology groups,
and of course standalone facilities, clinics and centers to properly insure and manage the risk of a lawsuit now and in the future.