Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
As a medical professional, it’s important to take necessary measures to protect your livelihood. The increasing number of medical malpractice lawsuits makes it essential for physicians and healthcare facilities to purchase medical malpractice insurance.
What Is Medical Malpractice Insurance
Medical professional liability insurance is needed when a health care provider fails to provide the standard medical care due to a patient.
Malpractice insurance covers bodily injury and personal injury such as mental distress and loss of wages. Discovering medical complex is usually complex and medical liability insurance spend significant funds investigating malpractice lawsuits and defending claims that eventually turn out to not be in a patient’s favor because of this higher premiums are usually required.
Medical professional liability insurance covers defense costs and it also handles the settling of claims resulting from medical error or negligence. However, most of medical malpractice insurance policies do not cover criminal or intentional acts of negligence and error.
Five Types Malpractice Insurance
It’s important to understand the basics and the terminology associated with medical liability insurance before purchasing. There are basically five types of medical malpractice insurance policies that you can choose from, each offer different benefits and premium amounts vary. These insurance policies include:
– Claims-paid
– Claims –made
– Tail
– Occurrence
– Prior Acts
Claims made policies covers insured medical malpractice acts that happened during the duration of the policy. Some policies offer what is called a tail coverage which allows for insured acts to still be covered shortly after the policy expires or is cancelled only if the negligent act occurred while the policy was still active. Claims made policies have expensive premiums because it’s difficult to predict if and when future claims will arise.
Claims-paid policy premiums vary. The premiums are based on the number of claims that were settled in the previous year and the amount of claims projected for the following year. Claims filed even years after the policy is retroactive, can still be covered under this insurance policy. Also, the difference between claims-paid polices and other insurance liability plans is that that a claim isn’t considered valid until a “Summons and Complaint” is received.
Occurrence policies covers insured incidents that occur while the policy is still effective, regardless of how much time passes before the insurer is informed of the claim. Occurrence policies are risky and expensive for policy holders because premiums are determined by future projection of claims.
Tail coverage is just an extension on the reporting period of an insured incident. This is usually offered by insurance carriers. It protects physicians and health care facilities against claims that arise after their policy has been cancelled. Although, this is feature is expensive the ramifications of not purchasing it can be great.
Prior Acts provides the same protective features that tail coverage provides. The only difference is that it’s purchased by the new insurer.
Medical liability insurance plans can be customized or tailored to fit a medical providers specific needs.