What is medical malpractice insurance and who should be covered by it?
Medical malpractice insurance helps insulate healthcare professionals from personal liability. Hospitals usually carry malpractice insurance for everyone that is licensed and under privileges at that hospital.
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#justiceislovely #thelovelylawfirm #sclawyer - I guess, the first question is, who has malpractice insurance, and who needs it?
- Usually hospitals carry it for everybody that's licensed, and under privileges under that hospital. So you know we always say doctors, do they have privileges? Same thing with the nurses and staff that work there. Do they have privileges to work there? And usually they're covered under that. The insurance doesn't insulate you from criminal liability.
- And traveling nurses are a little bit different, because they're coming from all over. It always comes down to the insurance contract. Is the hospital going to cover its traveling nurses? And I know, I have some family members who are traveling nurses, and so there will be a company that helps them-
- An agency, right?
- An agency get those jobs, and sometimes that agency will have malpractice insurance. But if you're a traveling nurse, specifically, you need to pay attention to whether, you should ask that question when you take the job, or when you sign up with an agency. "Do you have your own malpractice insurance? Am I gonna be covered by the hospital?" Because you better believe it, if something happens, that those insurance companies are gonna find every way not to cover you, so you wanna make sure you've got somebody covering you, and that you don't need to carry your own.
- Well, what does having malpractice insurance protect you from?
- I mean, it helps insulate you from personal liability.
- Yeah. It'll protect you from civil liability for if something like this happens. So if RaDonda, the hospital, because I'm assuming because they paid that they covered her for malpractice. They paid because there was a big mistake at the hospital. She made the mistake, and the family got compensated for it. That doesn't happen if you don't have insurance. So if the hospital insurance wouldn't have covered her, say she was a traveling nurse in a different state, the family could have sued her. So she could be looking at jail time, and losing her house, losing her car, owing this family all this kind of money.
- So it's so important to have, even though it may not fully protect you in situations like this.
- It's never gonna protect you from criminal liability. But I think in this case, it should have been enough. The civil liability should have been enough, yes.
