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Medical Practice Insurance

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Australia is a great place to practise medicine, but is an extremely litigious environment. Traditionally, medical malpractice claims were made against individual healthcare professionals, however today medical practitioners are delivering medical services via complex legal structures.

It is now becoming increasing likely that actions are made against the Legal Entities themselves, including its staff as well as, the individual healthcare professional.

This scenario gives rise to a number of questions:

Who is liable for actions of employed or contracted staff and medical practitioners?
Will Individual Practitioners policies respond to claims made against the business?
Does the business require their own medical indemnity policies to protect its liabilities?
What additional cover is required for my Practice?

Medical Indemnity Insurance

Medical Indemnity protects a company for its legal liability for claims made against them including , claimant costs and expenses arising from a breach of their professional duty relating to the provision of healthcare treatment, advice of services in the course of their business.

Policies vary and can include many extensions which, can be tailored to meet specific needs.

Does Your Practice Need Its Own Policy?

It is becoming an extremely and integral part of a Practices Risk Management procedure to investigate your Practices requirements for its own policy

Below is a simple summary of situations which highlights some of the circumstances in which you should consider purchasing a Practice Policy	Possibly	Yes
Sole Health Practitioner – don’t share staff
Legal Entity owed by a number of Doctors who are insured by different Insurers
Legal Entity –Corporate Entities who provide Healthcare Services and employs staff/consultants/contractors?
Legal Entity who provides support to Medical Practitioners providing medical services (billing etc.)?
Legal Entity who provides different Medical treatments that are not covered by your individual Policy category

As circumstances differ, we strongly encourage facilities to obtain independent advice from us, in order to establish your practices exposure and how best to cover these.

Policies can be tailored to meet a clients specific needs

Advantages of a Practices Policy

Even if you, as an Individual medical practitioner, are fortunate enough to be covered by your individual policy for an action against your Practice, your own claims history will be tainted. This record will remain with you and influence your individual premiums.
It reduces the mental anguish which, is likely to occur where you are relying on a number of individual policies to provide cover to the entity. This becomes even more relevant where you have a number of different Insurers involved who, all have their own views on the level which Practitioner’s policy should carry the major brunt of a claim.
Having a separate policy provides peace of mind by ensuring that actions made against the legal entity and its staff will be covered (subject to the terms, conditions and exceptions of the policy), there is less chance of potential gaps in cover where individual practitioners rely on their own policies to cover the Practice.
Where you incur vicarious liability for, actions of one of your staff, your own individual policy may be unaffected.
Where there is a claim against multiple parties, the resulting loss will be apportioned depending on the damages. This reduces the impact on individual policies.

Types of Facilities among other’s that we can arrange cover for includes:

Medical Practices
Day Surgeries
Medical Centres
Radiology Practices
Pathology Groups
IVF Clinics

Practice Indemnity Insurance

The majority of Insurers will provide cover to a practice entity and its employees (except medical practitioners), subject to their terms and conditions, for:

Civil Liability (Civil award imposed by a Civil Court arising out of healthcare services)
Broad Definition of Insured Person including employees (not acting in the capacity of a medical Practitioner), directors, students, members of ethics comities –with optional extension to cover employed RMOs
Breaches of the Trade Practice Acts (with the provision of healthcare in relation to the business)
Good Samaritan Acts (Healthcare provided at the scene of a medical emergency)
Intellectual Property cover (legal liability in respect of an infringement)
Vicarious liability (of consultants, contractors and Medical Practitioners)
Breaches of Privacy (Unintentional breach of privacy laws)
Dishonesty of Employees/Medicare benefits fraud (legal fees)
Legal Fees and Enquiries (Defending a prosecution, or responding to an inquest, investigation, audit or complaint by a corner’s court, tribunal or legally constituted professional board)
Loss of Documents (costs incurred to replace or restore damaged or destroyed documents)
Continuous Cover (Cover for known circumstances prior to the period of insurance)
Severability and non-imputation
Retroactive cover –considered

Hi! I’m the Senior manager for Medical Indemnity and other Insurance requirements for your Medical Establishment.

If you have any further questions regarding your Medical Indemnity and other Insurance requirements for your Medical Establishment.

Please call my direct line: 03 9557 7400, or click below and I'll call you back.

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