Healthcare

Healthcare covers a wide spectrum from domiciliary care through to specialist private clinics and hospitals providing specialist advice and surgery to patients.

The treatment of patients can be highly emotive especially when if it involves cosmetic techniques. Patient expectations are high and any small failure in the provision of those services can lead to serious and ultimately very expensive consequences. Even if the cause of a problem is disputed the legal costs defending your position can be huge. Insurance is vital as it will protect you in these circumstances.

Insurance requirements range from fairly standard policies like public liability through to more specialist forms of insurance like medical malpractice insurance. It’s important to understand the duties that are performed and the measures undertaken to minimise risk. Underwriters will want to understand the experience of individual healthcare professionals and/or the company in their specialist field.

Insurance can be both expensive and difficult to find and therefore it’s vital to enlist the services of a broker that understands the insurance market for healthcare professionals.

The most important forms of insurance for healthcare professionals are:-

Professional Indemnity
Medical Malpractice
Cyber Insurance
Public Liability

Medical malpractice insurance provides indemnity for professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient, with most cases involving medical error.

With rapid advances in pharmaceutical efficacy, combined with increasingly sophisticated and complicated medical procedures professional healthcare providers are under increasing pressure to meet not only the minimum standards of their industry but also the expectations of their patients.

Its not only Doctors and Nurses that require medical malpractice insurance. For anyone that providing clinical or medical care medical malpractice insurance is essential. Claims are frequent and settlements significant.

The insurance market for medical malpractice is not large. Understanding and underwriting such business is time consuming. The level of research required and the need to keep abreast of problems and progress in these fields is essential. Industry developments, happening at an ever-increasing rate, can mean huge changes in exposure for different segments of the profession. Therefore only specialist insurers are able to underwrite confidently and effectively in this market.

ADF Insurance work extensively with these insurers to deliver medical malpractice insurance for a wide range of professional healthcare providers.

As a wave of new ways to treat patients is breaking into the market, and doctors and physicians are considering how best to treat patients quickly. There has been a huge increase in the development and reliance on telemedicine. Telemedicine is the next branch of healthcare. It is no by means perfect and as a result it is considered risky.

Telemedicine is more than just a one dimensional risk, it has many facets. There is the cyber risk element from a data breach or the technology failing, but their is also the malpractice risk of misdiagnosis or the wrong treatment being provided as with any treatment.

Telemedicine isn’t just for the smaller medical requirements it can vary. Anything from physiotherapy guides to long term care that can alert a physician when symptoms change. From Radiology to dermatology and most things in between. Technology has a huge role that it can and will play in the future of medicine.

Read more on telemedicine here.

As part of our ability to insure medical professionals we have also got access to be able to insure domiciliary care agencies. We understand that domiciliary care is important to a lot of people in the community. And know how important it is that these businesses are able to continue to operate. It is also a requirement by the CQC that all domiciliary care agencies have insurance in place before they begin to operate. Insurance is a fundamental part of their business as without it agencies are unable to operate as stated in the guidance notes from the CQC website relating to regulation 13(a).

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