Whether you are a sole practitioner, a partnership or a group medical practice operating from a medical centre, it may be advisable to consider your doctors surgery insurance before too long.
That’s as a result of the fact that you will be exposed to numerous financial risks due to the nature of your profession.
Some of these will be obvious and could include things such as:
- Natural disasters that cause your premises to become uninhabitable
- Accidents to key and expensive equipment
- Burglary with its associated theft and vandalism
- Accidents on the premises to patients or those accompanying them
- Accidents to staff in the legitimate pursuance of their duties.
In all these instances, the responsibility may rest with you by default or a court could decide that it should reside with you. The sums involved could be high and you will have to pay unless you have some form of business or medical practice insurance in place.
These are some of the traditional risks and are handled by specialist doctors surgery insurance aimed at professional practices. Components of this may include things such as professional, pubic and employers’ liability plus good commercial buildings and contents insurance. Some of these things may be legal requirements, others may be worth considering as part of protecting your interests.
Unfortunately though, we live in an increasingly litigious society and medical care professionals are not immune from these issues. There are some perhaps less obvious risks in these categories that you may face including:
- Medical malpractice – professional negligence and direct or consequential damages claims are a very real possibility should you or one of your colleagues make, or be perceived to have made, a mistake or error of judgement.
- Legal costs – if you have to defend yourself in court then you could face potentially crippling legal bills.
- Inappropriate behaviour claims – such claims may result in civil, professional body and perhaps criminal processes. At the very least this could result in a major loss of earnings as you defend yourself.
- Specialist driving risks – you and your staff may need to engage in regular driving as part of your duties of care provision. Many normal policies may not cover these risks and you could even unintentionally invalidate your car insurance.
All in all, as a doctor or other medical professional you may find that you are exposed to a number of major financial risks. The insurance options to address these may be complicated, specialised and the expertise may not be easily found in a general insurer.
There are specialist providers of doctors surgery insurance that offer expert advice and guidance in this area. They are specialists in finding the right insurance for medical professionals and finding cover for those sometimes difficult to place risk areas.
You probably wish to spend as much of your time as possible using your specialist skills in patient and related care rather than having to work out what are the ‘right questions to ask’ about insurance. Contacting a specialist provider of doctors surgery insurance for advice could be one way of giving you greater peace of mind and saving you time in ‘trawling the marketplace’.