• Twitter
  • LinkedIn
708-478-3440 Contact Us
Southpoint Insurance
  • Commercial Solutions
    • Commercial Package Policies
      • General Liability
      • Property Insurance
      • Commercial Auto Insurance
      • Umbrella Liability
      • Business Owner’s Policy Insurance
    • Workers’ Compensation
      • Loss Control Services
    • Professional Liability
      • Information Technology E&O
      • Cyber Liability
      • Dentists Malpractice
      • Oral Surgeons Malpractice
      • Directors & Officers Insurance
  • Personal Solutions
    • Personal Auto Insurance
    • Home Insurance
    • Yacht and Boat Insurance
    • Personal Umbrella Policy
    • Condo Insurance
    • Renter’s Insurance
    • Landlord Insurance
    • Pet Insurance
  • Benefits Department
    • Group Health
    • Life
    • Disability
    • 401k
  • Resources
    • White Papers
    • Our Blog
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Affiliate Partners
    • Areas We Serve
    • Associations
    • Awards
    • Careers at Southpoint
  • Menu Menu

How Does Malpractice Insurance Work?

Medical malpractice insurance is a critical coverage for all types of medical professionals, from registered nurses to surgeons. In some cases, it’s mandatory—you may need a policy to get licensed in your state or get a job at a hospital or medical practice. But what makes it so important, and how exactly does malpractice insurance work? Keep reading to learn the basics of malpractice insurance, including what it covers, how it protects medical professionals, the different types of policies you can choose from, and who needs it.

What Is Medical Malpractice Insurance?

Malpractice insurance is a type of professional liability insurance designed for medical professionals. If a patient sues their healthcare provider for medical errors, malpractice insurance can help pay for lawsuit costs and other fees.

What Does Medical Liability Insurance Cover?

Medical malpractice insurance covers various medical negligence claims, including:

  • Delayed or false diagnosis
  • Surgical errors, like performing the wrong procedure or causing damage to surrounding tissue
  • Failure to treat a medical issue
  • Birth-related injuries
  • Incorrect prescriptions or dosages
  • Nerve damage, sinus perforations, or infections due to dental procedures

Once a patient files suit, malpractice insurance can help pay for lawyer fees, court costs, settlements, judgments, and expert witnesses. Without a policy, practitioners would have to use their personal assets to pay these costs out of pocket.

How Does Malpractice Insurance Protect Medical Providers?

A medical malpractice claim may seem unlikely, but no medical professional is immune. Mistakes happen, and a patient may file suit even if you don’t believe you were negligent. You may still end up paying thousands to defend yourself in a medical malpractice lawsuit that ultimately gets dismissed.

Malpractice insurance protects you by acting as a financial safety net during lawsuits, regardless of whether a patient wins or loses. Instead of draining your savings and retirement accounts to pay legal fees and hefty settlements, you can rely on your policy to cover costs.

Understanding the Different Types of Malpractice Insurance

When purchasing malpractice insurance for yourself or your employees, you have two options: occurrence or claims-made policies. Depending on the one you choose, you may need tail coverage to protect yourself after canceling your policy.

Agent man presentation and consulting car insurance detail to customer and waiting for his reply to finish

What Is Occurrence-Based Malpractice Insurance?

Occurrence-based malpractice insurance works by providing coverage for any claims occurring during your policy term, regardless of when they get reported. For example, you could buy a policy in 2011 and cancel it in 2021. If a patient filed a lawsuit in 2022, you would still receive coverage as long as the incident leading to the suit happened in the decade your policy was active.

What Is Claims-Made Malpractice Insurance?

Claims-made policies cover claims that occur and get reported during your policy period. For example, let’s say you had an active claims-made policy from 2015 to 2020. One patient filed a suit in 2018 for an incident that occurred the year prior. Your policy would have covered this claim because it happened and got reported while your coverage was still in place. However, if an incident occurred in 2020 but a patient waited to file suit until 2021, your policy wouldn’t cover the claim.

Claims-made coverage is often cheaper than occurrence coverage because it depends on when a claim is reported. With an occurrence-based policy, you don’t have to worry about buying extra coverage after you retire—your policy will keep covering claims reported after the policy expires.

What Is a Tail Malpractice Policy?

A tail policy covers claims reported after your claims-made policy expires by extending coverage indefinitely or for a specified period. It may seem unlikely that a patient would file a lawsuit several years after an incident, but tail coverage protects you just in case.

You may need to purchase tail coverage if you retire, leave one employer for another, or move states. However, you may be able to continue coverage from one insurance company to the next. If you plan to keep practicing but need to change insurers, see if they will retroactively provide coverage for the years your previous policy was active.

Who Needs Medical Malpractice Insurance?

Doctors aren’t the only healthcare professionals who need malpractice insurance. Anyone who provides direct care to a patient should consider malpractice insurance to protect their assets. These professionals may include nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, dentists, oral surgeons, anesthesiologists, and other providers.

You may be covered under your employer’s policy if you work for a large healthcare facility or medical practice. However, many employers require high-risk staff to buy an additional policy. And in many cases, malpractice insurance isn’t just required by your employer—it’s required by law. Check your state’s laws to see if you have a minimum coverage requirement.

At Southpoint, dental malpractice insurance is our specialty. We can help you protect your financial future with an affordable policy.

Learn More

Protect Your Financial Future With Help From Southpoint Insurance

You spent years developing the skills and knowledge to become a medical professional. Don’t let one unexpected lawsuit derail your career and threaten your financial future. If you want to protect your practice for years to come, turn to Southpoint Insurance.

Our agency has over 50 years of experience finding insurance solutions for clients in risky industries, including oral surgery and dentistry. We can assess your practice’s risks, recommend the right limit amount, and find competitive claims-made and occurrence-based quotes from the most reputable malpractice insurance companies. Our team also offers every other type of insurance you might need to protect your property, team, and digital risks. Get in touch today to learn more about our medical malpractice insurance options or request a quote.

Protect Your Risks With Dental Malpractice Insurance

Dental malpractice suits may seem unlikely, especially if you have excellent patient relationships. But you can’t predict when a routine procedure will go wrong, causing your patient to consult a dental malpractice lawyer. You need professional liability insurance to ensure a lawsuit doesn’t threaten your financial future.

At Southpoint Insurance, we specialize in medical malpractice insurance for dentists and oral surgeons. Our experienced team knows the ins and outs of dental malpractice insurance and can help you determine the policy type, limit amounts, and coverages you need to protect your practice. We work with the most trusted dental and oral surgeon insurance carriers to get you affordable rates without sacrificing coverage. Get in touch today to learn more about our dental malpractice insurance options or request a quote.

Share This Post

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail

Related Postings

Employee looking at laptop screen behind a desk with two coworkers chatting in the background

Difference Between E&O and D&O and EPLI

Commercial Solutions, Insurance
Read more
March 21, 2023
https://www.thinksouthpoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Employee-sits-at-desk-while-two-employees-discuss-behind-him.jpg 1250 2000 Abstrakt Marketing Administrator https://southpointpro.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/southpoint_logo_f.png Abstrakt Marketing Administrator2023-03-21 09:00:002023-03-20 13:35:10Difference Between E&O and D&O and EPLI
Shaking hands. Smiling young man real estate broker handshaking with older family couple after buying selling property_

Who Needs Tech E&O Insurance?

Errors and Omissions, Insurance
Read more
February 23, 2023
https://www.thinksouthpoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Shaking-hands.-Smiling-young-man-real-estate-broker-handshaking-with-older-family-couple-after-buying-selling-property_.jpg 1250 2000 Abstrakt Marketing Administrator https://southpointpro.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/southpoint_logo_f.png Abstrakt Marketing Administrator2023-02-23 09:00:172023-02-21 09:40:01Who Needs Tech E&O Insurance?
Blue circuit board closeup connected to cpu with padlock

The Easiest Ways to Improve Cybersecurity in the Workplace

Insurance
Read more
January 24, 2023
https://www.thinksouthpoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Blue-circuit-board-closeup-connected-to-cpu-with-padlock.jpg 1250 2000 Abstrakt Marketing Administrator https://southpointpro.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/southpoint_logo_f.png Abstrakt Marketing Administrator2023-01-24 09:00:272023-01-16 11:20:21The Easiest Ways to Improve Cybersecurity in the Workplace

About Southpoint

  • Our Team
  • Awards
  • Areas We Serve
  • Associations
  • Affiliate Partners

Solutions

  • Commercial Insurance 
  • Employee Benefits Packages
  • Personal Insurance 

Headquarters

15341 S. 94th Avenue, Suite 100,
Orland Park, IL 60462
708-478-3440

Loop Location

2 Prudential Plaza
180 N. Stetson St., Suite 3500
Chicago, IL 60601

312-462-3823

Copyright © 2022 Southpoint Insurance.
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

OKLearn more

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Accept settingsHide notification only