What insurance protection do you need as a health professional?
If you are in a health-related job field, you are dealing with people’s well-being on a daily basis; the risks of a wrong decision, advice, prescription or treatment can be quite high. This type of job includes a variety of professionals such as doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, chiropractor, massage therapists, natural medicine specialists and many others.
Working in these fields you need a number of insurance coverages so that you can focus on people’s health and healing.
| Insurance | Brief description | Do I need it? | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
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Medical professional liability (also called) Malpractice Insurance
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This is insurance that protects health care providers against patient’s claims who might sue them due to negligence or harmful treatments decisions.
This type of insurance is a must for most health-care related cases |
Yes | Wrong prescription, treatment mistakes, an injury when completing a complex procedure — the list of potential reasons for a liability claim is long. |
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Commercial Car Insurance
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Insurance that covers business use of cars, trucks, vans and any other means of transportation. This policy can include coverage of vehicles (e.g. damages), drivers (e.g. medical costs, rehab, loss of income, funeral expenses), liability (e.g. damages to the third-party), uninsured motorist protection, comprehensive coverage (e.g. theft, fire etc.) and number of other protections. | Rarely | Unless you regularly visit your patients at home or at work to offer medical or any other treatment, you probably do not need commercial car insurance.
An exception here could be home health and support professionals who regularly visit seniors and those with limited mobility at their homes |
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Commercial Property Insurance
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Insurance that covers any type of commercial property from a number of risks such as theft, fire, natural disasters. | Yes | If you operate your business from home, it is very likely that you’d have numerous tools that you use to run your business, e.g. expensive medical devices, computer etc. |
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Commercial Building Insurance
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Insurance that covers various types of commercial property from pre-determined risks (also called perils) such as theft, natural disasters, fire. | Often | If you operate your health-related business from a commercial building, e.g. receiving patients, you might need to have this insurance.
The situation is different if you do not own the building but simply rent the space. |
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General Liability Insurance (also called Commercial Liability insurance)
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An insurance that protects you from various claims such as bodily injury, property damage, etc. resulting due to the unforeseen negligence of your business. Most businesses should consider having this protection. | Often | A patient coming to your clinic or treatment room, who fell on the stairs can sue you — those types of claims can occur independently of the nature of your health-related business. |