What is a medical malpractice policy?
Learn everything you need to know about medical malpractice with an example case study
Medical malpractice insurance is designed to protect practitioners against allegations of malpractice and negligence while carrying out aesthetic treatments.
With medical malpractice claims becoming increasingly costly, having the right insurance is an essential consideration for any cosmetic professional.
A medical malpractice policy works by protecting you against any failure in your professional duties to a patient. It helps protect you against any potential costs and damages arising out of insured treatments that you provide that you may be legally liable to pay.
You may be a very experienced practitioner with years of training and experience, but you can’t always prevent something from going wrong, no matter what procedures and precautions you put in place.
Different insurers will offer variable levels of cover so it’s important to check that your policy is suitable for your business practice from the outset.
Without adequate cover, you will be left to defend any allegations personally, which could incur significant legal costs. If you are deemed to be at fault, compensation claims alone can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds, and that’s before loss of earnings and other costs are taken into account, not to mention the stress and pressure involved with keeping your business running at the same time.
Hamilton Fraser’s standard medical malpractice insurance policy offers up to £5 million indemnity cover for any one claim or series of claims during the policy period. If the treatment administration has gone wrong, the policy will pay for all costs defending the allegation, as well as any sums and costs that are awarded to the claimant.
As the policy is a “legal contract”, it will protect you regardless of whether you have been proven negligent or otherwise. Your policy schedule will detail the treatments or procedures that are covered by the insurance, and these can be tailored to your needs.
We monitor the sector to allow for new treatments so our list of treatments you can be insured for is continually being updated.
If a specific treatment is not listed, please give us a call on 0800 634 3881 to discuss your bespoke requirements.
A patient attended an aesthetics clinic to receive a lip filler treatment. Post treatment the patient advised the practitioner that their lip filler had gone lumpy.
Despite this having been a documented and consented side-effect of this particular treatment, the patient was left dissatisfied with the follow up and aftercare provided by the clinic and two years later decided to pursue a medical negligence claim.
Due to the time that had elapsed, the practitioner had misplaced the patient’s consent form and therefore was unable to prove that they had fully consulted and consented the patient
On this basis, the policy was triggered, and the matter was settled in favour of the patient due to the lack of proof in defence of the practitioner. The patient was awarded £3,000 in damages; their legal costs were £8,900 and the defence costs were £4,800.
Had the practitioner not had medical malpractice insurance in place, they would have needed to cover these costs themselves. With adequate policy cover in place and no excess for this particular product, the insurers paid out for all of the costs.
