Discounted, Digital Online Urgent Care Liability Insurance Program designed to ease administrative s

April 17, 2012

The Doctors’ Insurance Agency can insure Urgent Care Facilities that are staffed by physicians, medical assistants, mid level providers and an integrated team of Allied Health Providers by working with our experienced underwriting team at The Doctors’ Company.

For over 20 years we’ve been working on showing our policyholders how much we care about their business and managing the risks. We research risk nuances to insure all of the ‘moving parts’…and, there are many ways to insure and there are many components of running a practice which need help and attention and professional partnership.

We work with our underwriters to rate the urgent care, family practice, occupational medical group fairly according to how many hours and which types of procedures. We rate according to the level of training and certification of each health care provider. Our goal is to provide your urgent care facility with a professional liability policy that rates you according to how many hours your physicians really work, how many days, what they are doing. Additionally, because of this recruiting responsibility that you all face, the policy provides tail for the physicians and allied healthcare providers when the time comes for them to move on.

Whether it is an owner of the practice, senior physician partner, or the supervising physicians, medical directors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants who work in these facilities, we will cover them with our discounted clinical professional liability insurance which provided accurate rating and tail built in to the premium.

If recruiting is a challenge due to the relentless staffing requirement of urgent care facilities, then our RVU rated or per patient rated policies allow for a claims made policy to function like an occurrence policy. These policies provide tail coverage to those who provide services for the clinic, or centers. The reality is: you will likely staff the center with some physicians who just cannot commit to more than one or two days per week, or month. And, then, they have to move on to another opportunity. This move on to another company usually triggers one tail exposure and premium after another.

As an example of urgent care facilities working to help so many in the community (and, in the process requiring In response to a national crisis in lack of adequate medical care for millions of uninsured people in the U.S., Bay Area Surgical Management announces ground-breaking program to provide immediate free medical services to 1,000 qualifying Santa Clara County, California residents.

This type of program is the kind that is doing such good work in the community, they are bound to grow and to succeed, which would bring staffing challenges to them. This facility professional liability insurance policy is designed to insure all of the providers for clinical medical malpractice insurance while allowing the physicians to leave without having to buy tail.

Through these types of charitable programs, patients that have either been denied or cannot afford health insurance will be eligible to receive entirely free healthcare services - from basic checkups to complicated surgeries. Intended as a role model for other medical centers, BASM's goal is to offer services to meet a broad spectrum of medical needs. Patients in BASM's Safety Net program will have access to primary care physicians, surgical specialists, imaging equipment, pharmaceutical coverage, physical therapy and rehabilitation treatments -- all at absolutely no cost.

This is heroic work. This is the kind of program that carries unique medical malpractice insurance needs, from insuring the primary care physicians and their ancillary mid level providers, to the administrative staff handling the billing, to the computers that are working hard to store the data, to the medical health care managers interacting with staff, to the board of directors making financial and strategic business decisions, The Doctors’ Insurance Agency works to provide it all with our online, discounted professional liability package. We will insulate the physicians and owners so that their assets are protected from the third party risk of professional liability insurance.

According to Santa Clara County data, access to health care in the region has significantly declined in the past decade. From 2000 to 2009, for example, the number of uninsured adults in the county more than doubled. During this time, the percentage of people who could not see a doctor due to the cost or lack of insurance nearly tripled, from 5 percent to a whopping 13 percent. As urgent care facilities and primary practice facilities gear up and invest in the technology to accommodate a more acceptable, inclusive societies wishes to provide care to more children and families, our insurance programs need to change with the times so that we can be a part of the cost solution to this threatening problem within our society.

A bit idealistic, and I perhaps am randomly citing this BASM organization as an example of working hard to bring healthcare to the millions of people who need it; and, this is an example of a program, multi disciplinary, multiple, specialized facilities and programs. They each need carefully designed medical malpractice insurance to help them these programs grow and provide proper claims reserves into the future.

Millions of patients around the country are suffering from inadequate care and long waits in emergency rooms simply because they lack health insurance. While it might be impossible to help everyone, programs like this Bay Area Surgical Management is proving that dedicated, responsible organizations can start changing the system with grass roots efforts in their local communities.

With approximately 342 visits at a clinic per week, visiting 9,000 urgent care centers, there is a big need for companies such to step in and offer their help and services. And, there is a concurrent need for insurance companies to design programs that can support their growth in the long term.

Insurance programs specially designed to insure urgent care, multi disciplinary risks, integrative health care, allied health providers and the facilities for and with which these providers work.