Medical malpractice insurance

What is medical malpractice insurance?

Medical malpractice insurance covers you for claims that you were negligent in your treatment of a client and caused them physical or mental harm. Even death. Claims like these can be for many thousands of pounds.

The circumstances surrounding claims of malpractice can be very stressful. But your insurance helps by paying for a specialist lawyer to defend you, picking up other legal costs, and covering any compensation you must pay.

It does that whether a claim is justified and proven or not, because you’ll have to deal with it regardless. That way, your insurance takes the strain, leaving you free to run your business.

Who needs medical malpractice insurance?

It doesn’t matter whether you call the people you treat ‘clients’ or ‘patients’. Because anyone at risk of causing unintentional physical or mental harm in the course of their work needs the protection of medical malpractice insurance.

That means people like:

• Aestheticians
• Beauticians and hairdressers
• Complementary therapists
• Dentists
• Nurses and other medical practitioners
• Paramedics and private ambulances
• Personal trainers, yoga and Pilates teachers
• Psychiatrists, counsellors, and mental health professionals
• And many more…

What’s the difference between malpractice insurance and professional indemnity insurance?

Medical malpractice insurance (sometimes called ‘treatment liability insurance’), does a different job to professional indemnity (PI). Rely on the wrong one, and you could find you’re not covered when a claim comes in.

Agreed, PI insurance is concerned with your professional services. And if someone is harmed during your treatment of them, it’s down to a failure of your professional services.

But which type of insurance covers a claim comes down to the result of that failure.

Professional indemnity insurance is designed to deal with situations where someone has suffered a financial loss. And it’s still a good idea to have PI, to cover you for any claims involving breach of care, confidentiality, or dishonesty.

But it means for any claims involving physical or mental harm, you need malpractice insurance instead.

Read more about What’s the difference between malpractice insurance and professional indemnity insurance?

What’s the difference between malpractice insurance and public liability insurance?

In the same way that medical malpractice insurance is concerned with claims resulting from injuries, so is public liability (PL). But it’s the way an injury is sustained that makes all the difference to which policy covers it.

That’s because public liability is all about accidental injuries and property damage.

Now, you might say you’d never cause your clients or patients intentional harm. So, any harm suffered during treatment is accidental and should be covered by your public liability insurance.

But PL only covers haphazard events like trips, slips, falls and other mishaps. You still need it, of course, in case a visitor hurts themself skidding on spilled water or tripping over an electrical lead.

But for injuries caused by your treatment of a patient or client, you need the protection of medical malpractice insurance instead.

Read more about What’s the difference between malpractice insurance and professional indemnity insurance?

What kind of claims does medical malpractice cover?

Medical malpractice insurance covers any claim that someone suffered physical or mental injury, or even death, as a result of your treatment of them.

Here’s a few situations where your cover can help:

• A doctor fails to refer a patient to a specialist consultant, leading to delayed diagnosis and treatment, increasing the patient’s suffering.
• A hairdresser skips doing a patch test on a client before dying their hair, and they suffer a severe allergic reaction and burns to their scalp.
• A dentist takes out the wrong tooth, necessitating further extraction work and treatment to correct the mistake.
• A personal trainer fails to demonstrate an exercise adequately and pushes a client too hard, meaning they slip a disc.
• An aesthetician administers dermal fillers wrongly, and a client is left with facial scarring.
• A nurse fails to take proper patient observations or note changes in their condition on their record, with catastrophic results.

Why should I buy my insurance through PolicyBee?

Simply put because we’re a specialist broker. And we use our expertise to match you with the best medical malpractice policy for your needs.

But there are other sound reasons too. These are just a few of them:

• We’re digital, which means you can buy a policy online in a few clicks. But we’re human too, so you can speak to an expert advisor if you prefer.
• We don’t do call centres or phone menus, so a friendly voice will answer your call.
• We don’t do insurance jargon either. We speak in plain English, whether that’s on the website or on the phone.
• Policy documents are delivered straight to your inbox, quickly and efficiently with no hassle.
• If you have to make a claim, we’ll be by your side every step of the way.
• You get extras, like an ‘I’m insured!’ badge for your website and money each time you recommend us.

If you need any more convincing, check out our customer feedback and see what other people are saying about us. It’s them you should really listen to, after all.