Today’s healthcare environment is a changing landscape. Although the American Health Care Act was shelved last week from consideration in Congress, the future of healthcare is still widely unknown.
In the midst of these debates are the healthcare providers and physicians who must navigate the uncertain waters. According to Brian Alva, vice president of underwriting at
NAS Insurance, the independent underwriting manager is seeing more and more physicians move into offering services outside of just direct patient care – they are now entering into roles in more consultant capacity.
“They are looking for roles as a consultant to other healthcare entities,” says Alva. “Whether that is signing up as a contracted medical director, expert witness or doing things like reviews, they are lending their knowledge to other sides of the industry.”
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In recent years, the enactment of new regulations and rules in the healthcare industry has opened greater opportunities for healthcare providers to contribute services as a third-party consultant by offering their expertise in best practices, quality assurance and more. As Alva points out, these new opportunities pose new exposures, even if the roles may seem harmless.
“Causing financial harm to a healthcare organization from a consultancy role can be quite litigious and difficult from a claims perspective,” he says.
With healthcare reform still on the horizon, being mindful of nuances in exposures from cyber and privacy threats to patient risks, are key for agents and brokers working in this space.
“Recommending practices that can cause a fine or penalty if it goes against federal or state regulations is a large worry, especially as those regulations begin to change or are enforced differently,” Alva says. “Additionally, when you have a physician or nurse in a consultancy role, even if they are not working or interacting with patients, there is still that contingent bodily injury exposure.
“Any time you are working or recommending clinical guidelines or best practices, those will be put into practice and used to treat patients. If that causes, or allegedly causes, a patient injury, you need to have the contingent bodily injury coverage built into any insurance policy in this space,” he continues. “There are definitely many exposures out there even though [healthcare consultancy] might seem like a somewhat innocuous role … you have to make sure [your clients] are protected.”
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