Four Coverage Options To Consider When Creating Comprehensive Insurance for Small Medical Practices
When you get right down to it, running a small medical practice is basically the same as running a small business. You have a building or space to look after, equipment to buy, and medical supplies that need to be stocked and maintained. But if a hail storm were to strike or a patient were to slip and fall, can you honestly say that you would be prepared? If you’re looking to find out what comprehensive insurance for small medical practice settings can look like, then you may want to keep reading.
1. Medical Malpractice Insurance
If you were to stop 10 people and ask people how they would define “medical insurance”, chances are most of them would begin describing some form of medical malpractice insurance. And this is a good reason. The truth is, medical care goes beyond just the patient room. A patient’s health is a matter of literal life and death with quality of life implications to boot. It’s not far-fetched for a patient or a patient’s relatives to be unhappy with a diagnosis and to initiate a lawsuit as a result.
But here’s the thing: Even if you’re vindicated, the cost of mounting a legal defence against such lawsuits can be unbelievably expensive. When faced with the day-to-day costs of keeping a small medical practice on top of covering legal fees, it may be simply too much. That’s why medical malpractice insurance may be the closest thing to a must-have when you’re looking for comprehensive insurance for a small medical practice.
2. Commercial General Liability Insurance
When you stop and think about it, small medical practices see a lot of people over the course of a day. If you’re a clinic that regularly accepts walk-in patients, you might easily see upwards of 20 people each and every day. And that’s before you start factoring in the friends and family who may visit your clinic to provide support.
Over the course of a year, those numbers can really add up. And unfortunately the reality is that along with all those people, there are more opportunities for accidents to happen. Commercial general liability insurance provides coverage for incidents that involve bodily injury or property damage that occurs on your property or as a result of doing business. Whether you’re leasing or owning your medical office, this is an insurance option that can help you protect your assets.
3. Commercial Property Insurance
When you’re a small medical practice, your equipment is everything. And the simple reality of offering a highly-specialized service is that equipment and medical supplies can be very costly to replace. A lot of small business owners often assume that insuring their building is enough.
However, if a natural disaster, flood, fire, or act of theft were to occur, your medical supplies as well as your equipment and any modifications you make to your building may not be covered. Commercial property insurance policy can help small medical practices recover the value of the damage that has been done to their property in the aftermath of a disaster.
4. Business Interruption Insurance
In a worst-case scenario, insurance can go a long way towards compensating you for damage directly done to the building or your property. But collecting on that damage is only half the battle. Because the truth is that every day you spend troubleshooting and chasing after repairs, is a day that you’re not making money. And on a fundamental level, those losses are harder to quantify. Business interruption insurance can help you compensate for:
- Ongoing expenses
- The costs of moving to a temporary location
- Losses in profit
As you can see, this is the kind of coverage that may be able to give small medical practices more room to maneuver in the event of a disaster.
How an Insurance Broker Can Help Your Medical Practice
With a broker’s help creating a comprehensive insurance plan can be a lot easier. Here are two ways an Insurance Broker can help your medical practice.
1. A Broker Can Help You Put Together a Comprehensive Insurance Plan That Works For Your Needs
Running a small business is a skill set in and of its own. Due to the nature of the work, a small medical practice has even more specific needs. As such, there are a lot of nuances involved with constructing a comprehensive insurance package for your practice. To that end, why not get help from an experienced professional who has an expert-level understanding of how different insurance coverages can fit together?
2. You Can Compare Rates More Easily
Insurance shopping can be difficult because there are so many plans and policies for medical practices to choose from. If you want to get a comprehensive plan at the best rate possible, your only hope is to compare plans and be meticulous about making sure you choose the right one.
However, when you’ve got a busy medical office to attend to, finding the time to comparison shop isn’t easy. One of the major benefits of working with a broker is that an experienced firm will have access to a wide range of lenders and plans. So not only do you get to sit back and focus on doing what you do best while your broker runs the comparisons, but you also may be able to get better rates as well.
FAQ
What are the types of insurance in a medical practice?
There are several different coverages that should be considered for a medical practice. In many respects, a medical practice is similar to any other small business in terms of the risks associated with welcoming the public to your location. The liability coverages that should be considered include Commercial general liability insurance, commercial property insurance and business interruption insurance.
Added to that are the particular exposures that come with a medical practice, which makes Medical Malpractice Insurance a necessity for practicing medical professionals. Additional coverages that should be considered is Cyber Liability Insurance to protect client records from potential online tampering or data loss.
What kind of insurance does a doctor need?
A doctor is in need of Medical Malpractice Insurance to cover the potential risk and costs associated with patient lawsuits. These can occur for a variety of reasons, including error or omission on the part of the medical professional, as well as dissatisfaction with a particular treatment or diagnosis on the part of the patient or the patient’s family.
This insurance will cover the costs of mounting a legal defence and often can include the cost of damages as well. If a doctor is operating a clinic that is open to the public, that medical practice also needs certain insurance coverage consistent with what is required with any other small business.
Is professional liability the same as malpractice?
No, professional liability insurance is not the same as medical malpractice insurance. Medical malpractice insurance is a type of Errors and Omissions Insurance that was designed for the healthcare profession. This type of coverage deals specifically with the grave potential harm that can come from errors in the medical field.
Professional liability insurance is coverage for professionals for claims that carry a financial loss. For example, if you are a financial professional and you give a client bad professional advice related to investments, you will need to have professional liability coverage in case you are sued.
What is liability insurance in the medical field?
Commercial general liability insurance in the medical field relates to the operations of a clinic or other medical service that welcomes the public. This coverage is necessary to guard against potential hazards that could happen to patients or members of the public in the medical facility.
These include potential bodily injury from slips or falls, as well as property damage that could occur while clients are at your business. Medical professionals should also carry medical malpractice insurance, as described above, to protect themselves against class action suits that may arise out of the practice of their profession.
Conclusion
In many regards, when you own a small medical practice, you are a small business owner with all of the concerns that come with that. As such, it only makes sense that when you’re looking for comprehensive insurance for small medical practice settings, you want a combination that factors in both the “medical” and the “small practice” sides of the equation.
Partnering with a qualified and experienced insurance broker can simplify your search on a couple of levels. Firstly, because a professional will have the type of industry and product knowledge that can enable you to put together an insurance package that works well for your practice. And then secondly, because the connections and access to issuers brokers have made it possible for you to compare and find fantastic rates in a fraction of the time it would take to do it yourself. Get in touch with an ALIGNED insurance company broker to learn how you can get a comprehensive insurance policy for your small medical practice today!
