As private equity funds fuel increasing consolidations in health care, the need to provide simple but comprehensive malpractice insurance solutions becomes more and more necessary. The key is to find a single malpractice policy that can accommodate all of the physicians associated with the merging groups. This is important for many health care providers right now as they undergo mergers or join a network.
The focus of these Medical Malpractice Insurance policies should be protecting the network organization against financial professional liability and medical professional liability without delaying the closing date.
There are a lot of moving parts involved in an acquisition. Often the best decision is to wait to set up a new policy. It shouldn't be a deal breaker if doctors aren't all on the same policy right away, so there's no need to require all doctors to switch to the single carrier immediately. You can have one majority carrier covering the doctors, the new organization and the acquired entities with different retroactive dates.
The documentation can carefully sort out which carrier covers the mid-level providers, allied healthcare providers, as well as those who are employed, contracted and shareholders.
Here are the important details necessary in the process of setting up a new malpractice policy when bringing multi-specialty groups together:
- The retroactive dates
- Departed physician endorsements
- Scheduled physicians
- Shared limit auxiliary providers
- Hospitalist physicians
One policy can extend retroactive cover over all of the entities being acquired.
This dramatic change in healthcare started well before the pandemic, but since March 2020, the need for creative acquisition malpractice insurance has grown. At that time, there was an abrupt shift that inverting the curve of clinical visits and telehealth visits: suddenly telehealth visits became the primary method of delivering healthcare.
Consequently, our clients and carriers changed their medical malpractice solutions significantly. We had to find carriers who were quick to adapt and understand the needs that were arising given the changing circumstances.
Carriers needed to understand how to properly extend vicarious liability and allow their contracts to work well with other carriers. In addition, because most of these organizations have incorporated telephone visits, we need carriers that understand pricing, underwriting and claims defense of Telehealth. Incidentally, these Telemedicine Malpractice Insurance carriers also had good solutions for non-direct patient care and medical consulting.
The Doctor's Company developed this concept just after 2004, during an abrupt hardening of the market. During this time, losses increased, underwriting became more conservative, and companies were unwilling to extend their policies to cover newly-acquired entities.
TDC leaned into this gap to meet this need in the market. The Doctor's Company has a keen understanding of the details of vicarious liability.
One of our new carriers providing liability solutions is one of the Lloyds of London innovative syndicates, a company called XS Pro Liability.
Even though not all MDs are providing direct patient care, they are still “in the mix” with patients—helping to advise, consult and navigate all the information that informs their next medical decision.
An acquisition requires a comprehensive solution for liability coverage, including all areas of care, from conventional clinical care to telehealth, surgical, integrative, and more.
The Doctor's Insurance Agency understands of all of this and can help you find the right policy or policies to allow you to move forward without missing important acquisition deadlines.