What is Medical Malpractice Insurance?
Medical malpractice insurance, otherwise known as medical professional liability insurance, protects you, your assets, and your reputation when allegations of medical negligence or liability claims are filed. Even though it’s not required by law in most states, it is required for hospital privileges, employment, and payer contracts.
What is Medical Malpractice Insurance?
Medical malpractice insurance, otherwise known as medical professional liability insurance, protects you, your assets, and your reputation when allegations of medical negligence or liability claims are filed. Even though it’s not required by law in most states, it is required for hospital privileges, employment, and payer contracts.
The MPL Basics
Medical Professional Liability Insurance: What You Need to Know
Medical professional liability results when a healthcare professional commits an act, error, or omission that deviates from accepted standards of practice in the medical community and causes injury to the patient. The most common medical malpractice claims include:
- Misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose.
- Birth Injuries
- Treatment Error
- Surgical Complications
- Medication Error
Medical malpractice coverage protects physicians from the financial loss of personal assets and damage to their reputation in the event of a malpractice lawsuit. MICA’s medical malpractice insurance covers your defense costs outside the limit of liability. This means that regardless of the defense attorney and expert witness fees, your original limitation of liability will not be diminished.
Premium rates are primarily determined by actuarial data based on the frequency and severity of losses, specialty, and coverage limits. Other factors that impact premium costs are location, procedures performed, policy type, and full/part-time status. MICA has a history of keeping rates stable yet competitive in our ever-changing marketplace. The best way to determine the cost of your premium is to request a free personalized quote from the MICA team.
There are two types of medical professional liability policies, occurrence, and claims-made insurance.
An occurrence policy provides coverage for incidents that happen during the policy period, regardless of when you learn of a claim.
A claims-made policy covers claims that occur and are reported during the active policy period. If a claim is made against you after the policy is canceled, your tail coverage allows you to report it to your prior carrier. MICA offers Claims-Made coverage, which allows premiums to start low in the initial years and only increase as your exposure to a claim increases - rates mature in year 4 or 5.
If you're considering canceling or switching your claims-made policy, you will need to either purchase tail coverage from your current carrier or nose coverage (prior acts coverage) from your new carrier to avoid having a gap in your coverage.
Tail coverage gives you protection for claims that occur on or after your retroactive date but are first known to you and reported after your claims-made policy ends.
What to Consider
What to Consider When Choosing Your Policy…
When choosing the best medical malpractice insurance for your practice, the cost of premium isn’t the only factor to take into consideration. There are several other factors that are even more important to look for as this decision may affect the success and protection of your private practice.
8 Features to Look for in Medical Professional Liability Insurance for Physicians
An A.M. Best rating gives you an independent, third-party evaluation of the financial strength of your carrier. A.M Best stands out among rating agencies because of its longevity and specialization in rating only insurance carriers.
MICA’s 35-year “A” rating is a firm indication of financial strength and of its ability to fulfill its financial obligation to you in the event of a claim.
Carrier reputations are the perceptions people develop about the carrier based on their own experiences and the experiences of others in the community. Reputations are earned. A carrier’s reputation when it comes to claims handling matters since it can be an indication on how a carrier works with their insureds when a claim arises. Do they give their insureds a say in settling a claim or going to court? Does someone answer your calls and e-mails promptly? What value do insureds get for the premiums they pay?
In MICA’s case, our reputation has been earned by putting our insureds first, making sound business decisions and by focusing on the insured’s needs. We always do right by our insureds and in service to our mission of defending the practice of medicine. The organizational structure of MICA aligns with our claims philosophy as we don’t answer to shareholders or investors, we answer to our insureds – and it shows. MICA works closely with insureds, we stand by our insureds at every step of the way and are supportive in their decision to settle or have their time in court.