Content area
Full Text
In order to meet the ever-changing professional liability insurance needs of the membership and to promote the further expansion of the nurse anesthesia profession, AANA Insurance Services is proud to announce new insurance coverage options available to CRNAs and CRNA groups. These new options will help CRNAs remain competitive and address the challenges in the evolving healthcare marketplace. Simply put, CRNAs who purchase professional liability insurance will have more coverage options to choose from regardless of their employment situation, practice setting, or the types of procedures they perform.
One of the most significant new coverage options is occurrence coverage. For the last seven years, only claims-made coverage has been available to CRNAs. If you've never purchased professional liability insurance, or if you've only purchased it within the last seven years, you might not be aware of the differences between claims-made and occurrence coverage.
Claims-Made Coverage
With claims-made coverage, the insurance company is required to defend and/or pay a claim on a policyholder's behalf for a wrongful act that occurred during the policy period, but only if the claim is also reported to the insurance company during the policy period. Once a claims-made policy expires (or is cancelled or nonrenewed) however, there is no longer any coverage available to the policyholder. If a claim is reported after the policy has expired, the insurance company has no obligation to defend the policyholder.
In order to have more time to report claims after a claims-made policy has expired, the policyholder can buy an endorsement from the insurance company called a "tail." The "tail" endorsement extends the time period the policyholder has to report claims that occurred during the policy period.
Insurance companies charge for the "tail" endorsement; the amount of this charge can vary by insurance company. The length of the claim reporting period provided by each company's "tail" can be different as well. The premium the two insurance companies represented by AANA Insurance Services charge for their "tail" endorsement equals 100 percent of the policyholder's expiring claims-made policy premium. The "tail" endorsement offered by both of these companies provides an unlimited time in which to report claims. Other insurance companies may charge 200 percent or more of the policyholder's expiring policy premium for a "tail" endorsement...