Malpractice Insurance Question

[Madden007]

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Some malpractice insurance companies give significant discounts to psychiatrist who are practicing part time e.g. 50% off premiums for those working less than 20 hours.

Question: If I work 20 hours for an organization that provides malpractice insurance and sign up to work 15 hours for a different company that requires me to provide my own insurance do I technically qualify to carry a "part time" malpractice insurance?

I know this is a question that an insurance company would best be able to answer, but with so much experience here thought I would ask. I guess the underlying question is whether malpractice insurance encompasses all work that one does as a psychiatrist or whether it only covers a specific job that is negotiated in the malpractice agreement. Thanks, folks.

 

[nexus73]

The insurance policy will explicitly say what it covers. You can get insurance that covers your work at multiple places, but in this scenario you would just get coverage for the non-agency job. So you should be able to get the part time discount.

 

[dl2dp2]

Question: If I work 20 hours for an organization that provides malpractice insurance and sign up to work 15 hours for a different company that requires me to provide my own insurance do I technically qualify to carry a "part time" malpractice insurance?

Not typically. If you work for an organization (other than your own private practice), the group malpractice typically stipulates that it only covers work done at the site being covered. I would not play fire with this. In general insurance companies will deny coverage for any and all reasons, including site restrictions.

If you buy your own private practice insurance, typically it says that it covers your clinical work for X hours @ a particular site (i.e. your private office, or your locum site, etc). This is typically the product you need, say from PRMS or Frankel, if you do locum for 15 hours. This product is cheap (2-3k a year) and 100% deductible. If you want to negotiate it you can ask the locum agency to pay for it. However, I'm unclear as to how you might do this if you work at multiple locum sites--some other posters who do lots of locums might chime in--that's a question for the insurance company (I'm guessing you can add multiple sites as a rider). Assuming you work less than 20 hours, your rate shouldn't be significantly affected for this.

Assuming you got this job from a locum agency--and this is typically how it works when a facility says they don't cover medmal, you should start with asking the agency this question. These agencies typically have comprehensive services in getting good rates for medmal for their listed jobs, as well as, if you do multiple locums, family health insurance, etc. -- you don't want an ACA plan. This is also state dependent. I have explored locum sites that are not too far of a drive but in a different state, and in that case your private practice insurance is DEFINITELY useless, and the facility agreed to put me on a rider immediately after I raised that point. In psychiatry it's somewhat unusual for locum sites to not pay medmal because it's so cheap--typically this is an administrative oversight rather than by design.

This question actually reminded me that I needed to update my insurance certificate for the new office location.

 

[tyrionlannister00]

I work at three different sites, each has it's own malpractice policy which I am on: 1 million / 3 million... If one of them said "get your own policy", I would do just that. For psych I don't think it is that expensive in the grande scheme of things.