insurance

RiskManager · Nov 17, 2015

https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/one-healthcare-risk-999441.html

If you decide to buy a policy, the typical cost is around $ 100/year, although this can vary depending upon your specific coverage situation.

Generally speaking, if you are an employee of a traveler agency, it is the agency that covers you for malpractice, not the hospital to which you are assigned. If you buy your own insurance, it will be secondary to the Liability Insurance provided by your employer and the policy is written such that coverage is rarely triggered on your behalf.

NedRN · Nov 17, 2015

Personally, I'd want my own lawyer looking after my best interests rather than the doctor's, hospital's, or agency's if I had direct involvement in a big issue. Personal malpractice insurance also provides an additional financial buffer. Perhaps most importantly, if any of this triggers a report to the BON, malpractice provides license protection in the form of representation.

RiskManager · Nov 17, 2015

Personally, I'd want my own lawyer looking after my best interests rather than the doctor's, hospital's, or agency's if I had direct involvement in a big issue. Personal malpractice insurance also provides an additional financial buffer. Perhaps most importantly, if any of this triggers a report to the BON, malpractice provides license protection in the form of representation.

Read the linked article above to see how this is a common misperception about individual nursing policies. You will not have your own attorney for a malpractice claim or a BON report unless coverage under the policy is triggered. Coverage under the policy is rarely triggered. This is why the policies are so cheap.

NedRN · Nov 17, 2015

I think this is an area where reasonable people can disagree. The post you wrote was written from the hospital perspective, and they have a vested interest in discouraging private malpractice insurance. If you visit NSO's site, there is a series of equally persuasive videos on the benefits of private insurance. Of course every stakeholder has their own vested interests including all the insurance carriers. All insurance carriers also try to get out of paying, so that is not unique to nursing malpractice insurance. It is more likely that private nursing insurance is so cheap because nurses are seldom found to be primarily at fault, and as you said, often others bear primary fault or major fault.

One thing you got right is the enormous complexity and numbers of different situations and jurisdictions that can arise. There is no way of telling ahead of time if employer coverage will protect you under all circumstances. A quick visit to NSO's site shows a claim of 83 million dollars paid in coverage over a 5 year period. So clearly money was spent on behalf and to the benefit of policy holders, the nurses.

Malpractice claims can be very complex and there is little way to tell ahead of time how it might go. There could be a carrier decision, or a hospital corporate decision (who are almost always self insured) to throw a nurse under the bus, assign primary blame, or who knows what else. The agency malpractice insurance could be poor quality with an offshore underwriter, or simply a forged document by an agency in financial trouble (who may also not pay withholding taxes, health insurance, workers comp) and there is no way to do due diligence privately on all possible variables.

Insurance is only useful if you actually need it because of a claim. To that extent, for any given individual on average, it is a bad deal - unless you need to make a claim. Like any other type of insurance you roll the dice and take your chances either way. Nursing malpractice insurance is so cheap that it difficult to make a case for not getting it. For a hundred dollars or so a year, it is not much of a gamble. For travel nurses, even less so than staff nurses.

8-ball, BSN · Nov 17, 2015

Thanks

RiskManager · Nov 17, 2015

[quote=NedRN;8789000 It is more likely that private nursing insurance is so cheap because nurses are seldom found to be primarily at fault, and as you said, often others bear primary fault or major fault.

No, nurses are primarily at fault all the time for malpractice cases involving nursing care. However, since in the typical malpractice claim the employer is vicariously liable for the actions of the employed nurse, and the employer's liability coverage is on the hook to pay for that liability, the nurses individual policy is excess coverage, and is not triggered. Low payouts mean low premiums.

You should also note from the article that I am an advocate of purchasing your own insurance, but you should do so with knowledge of the significant coverage limitations of that insurance that make it unlikely that it will ever kick in on your behalf for the typical employed nurse.