What is covered under malpractice insurance?

 

Dental indemnity protects the purchaser against their legal liability to paycompensation (including their own and claimants' costs and expenses) in respect of any claim of injury.

 

The scope of cover for all dental indemnity is limited to the activities declared to the provider at the time of purchase. In some instances this can be as blunt as simply ticking a box as to what type(s) of dentistry that are performed – eg. general dentistry; crows and bridges; implants.

 

This is not a problem for very standard practices, but if you undertake work that is not easy to simply categorise then when a claim arises it is possible that the provider will deny the claim.

 

Working with a good insurance broker, the full range of your actual activities are recorded and covered. A defence organisation can simply decide not to assist at its own discretion without explanation or recourse.

 

If there is a dispute in cover with a commercial insurer then under new insurance laws the insurer must demonstrate that they would not have provided cover if they had known that information.

 

In other insurances they can only reduce the claim by the amount of additional premium that would have been charged. These changes to insurance law, which were introduced in 2016, have significantly improved the balance between insurer and insured.

 

It is important to understand that the costs of dealing with a complaint are covered under dental indemnity.

 

This means that if a complaint runs up significant costs this is a significant loss to the indemnity provider – even if the dentist is subsequently found not to be at fault.

 

As described in the section on the cost of dental indemnity, these costs will drive up the price of insurance.

 

Some brokers provide a complaint management and mitigation service which can be highly cost effective as it deals with complaints quickly and effectively, preventing costs from rising and impacting indemnity costs.

 

If you'd like more information or would like to discuss anything mentioned above, please contact us.