Medical professional liability insurance is another name for medical malpractice insurance. There are two types of medical professional liability insurance, claims-made and occurrence policies. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these types of policies.

Claims-made insurance policies are one year long policies that are renewed each year without interrupting the coverage. Any claims made during the claims-made policy period will be covered, no matter when the incidence actually occurred, as long as the incident occurred after the original purchase of the claims-made policy. This means coverage is retroactive back to the first policy. This type of medical malpractice insurance is cheaper in the first few years of coverage as it is less likely claims will be made in the first few years of coverage. Premiums increase each year up to five years, when the reach the approximate cost of the occurrence policies.

Once a claims made insurance policy is cancelled, no further claims are covered. However, tail coverage can be purchased to cover any claims that occur for a certain amount of time after cancellation.

Occurrence medical professional liability insurance covers all claims that occur during the coverage period, regardless of when the claim is made. Because there is no way of knowing how many claims will eventually be made due to actions occurring any given year, the premiums for occurrence medical malpractice insurance are not necessarily cheaper in the beginning like they are with claims-made policies. This type of insurance covers the doctor forever against claims that result from the period in which the policy was in effect.

Both of these forms of medical professional liability insurance are very expensive, so there are currently a lot of organizations working on proposals to solve the problem of compensating any patients with legitimate medical malpractice claims without doctors having to pay huge premiums for liability insurance.

Some of the proposed solutions for the medical professional liability include capping non-economic damages, trying medical professional liability cases in a tribunal system outside of the main court system, use a no-fault system for compensation, using alternative dispute resolution methods like arbitration and medication, and using screening panels to review cases and determine whether or not cases should proceed to court.

Doctors need to have medical professional liability coverage in order to protect them from medical malpractice claims, which could otherwise bankrupt them should they occur. Doctors can lose a lot of money even on medical malpractice claims where they are not at fault, as they have to prove this.




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