One medical malpractice policy covering both the Advanced Practice Clinician and the doctor:
With such close supervision by a physician, there are many Medical Malpractice Insurance policies covering Physician Assistants that include a shared limit for the doctor. – the policy ‘names’ the Physician Assist as the insured and includes an endorsement naming the M.D.
There are also policies that name the M.D. and share with the PA. The one policy should and can insure more than one provider.
While each category has nuances, of course, there are basically 2 types of policies broadly defined to simplify these categories:
IMPL – Individual Medical Professional Liability insurance policy
The PA liability policy is an example of the IMPL.
You can insure the Advanced Practice Clinician (APC) alone and add the medical director as a shared additional insured by endorsement.
These policies are easy to obtain and affordable; they don’t add practitioners well (they don’t scale well)
The other type of policy is a group policy:
The OMPL – The Organizational Medical Professional Liability Insurance Policy . The Doctors Insurance Agency provides Organizational Professional Liability Insurance policies.
- If you are the Advanced Practice Clinician (physician assistant or nurse practitioner) who owns the practice and you employ or contract with Allied medical staff
—other professionals and medical doctors—then the policy should be structured as an OMPL!
These policies are written with the business name (the entity) as the Named Insured. The underwriters read the narrative of your practice and develop premium and policies that match the practice ..the policies match the work you do at competitive market premiums.
Whether your practice is clinical or aesthetic, these professional liability insurance policies can cover everyone working on behalf of your organization.And, importantly, the underwriters and liability policy ‘product designers’ recognize that insurance is yours.
》Including Professional Liability Insurance for the Medical Director…Perhaps the strongest feature of these organization policies (owned by physician assistants, or NPs) is that the ‘definition of insured’ is broad… and includes the medical director.
This is important because the structure recognizes the owner of the business is the advanced practice clinician (and the APC’s partners).
Insuring a collaborating MD should be part of the policy, not the other way around!
We are often asked to keep the medical director out of the insurance policy.
Many Advanced Practice Providers are advised to refer the Med Director to the ‘market’ for their own coverage. These policies for the medical director are referred to as “stand alone policies”.
A standalone medical director policy has its place in the market… but those policies follow the doctor, whereas the advanced practice clinician policy follows the APC.
The organization structure allows you to switch collaborating/supervising medical doctors without triggering an expensive tail premium.
Whether an individual Medical Professional Liability Policy or an organizational medical professional liability policy the Doctors Insurance Agency can help PAs find and place the right coverage to eliminate and significantly reduce the cost of tail.