About CHS Professional Liability Insurance
CHS/CNA coverage under the program is claims-made coverage. The Program’s limits range from $2 Million to $5 Million. A claims-made policy provides coverage for any potential claims that are reported by you or actual claims that are brought against you during the period of time for which the policy is in effect.
Your coverage provides worldwide protection against professional liability claims, which might be brought against you in your practice as a physician or surgeon.
Your professional liability protection covers you for damages resulting from:
- You or your organization providing or withholding of professional services.
- Providing or withholding of professional services by anyone whose acts you are legally responsible for including, among others, your employees and volunteer workers when working within the scope of their assigned duties for you.
- Your service on a formal accreditation board or similar board or committee.
For group practices, the limits apply separately to each covered physician and to the group itself. For solo practitioners, operating as a professional corporation, the physician and the corporation shares one limit.
Your liability protection includes coverage for professional services liability assumed by contract with an HMO, PPO, and IPA attributable to you or others insured by this policy.
Insurance protection is provided free of charge by endorsement for a physician substituting for you to cover professional services rendered on your behalf. The locum tenens shares in your limits of liability. Locum tenens coverage is provided up to 90 days in a policy year.
Physicians new to the practice of medicine receive a 50% premium credit for the first year of practice.
Subject to review by the underwriting committee, physicians may be eligible for a 50% reduction in premium if their professional activities are limited to twenty hours per week, or a maximum of 1,000 hours per year.
Each hospital participating in the CHS Program has a Risk Management Committee, which has the responsibility to review the ongoing function of the plan with regard to risk management issues. This committee has representatives from the insurance broker, legal counsel, and medical staff and hospital administration.
The physician and the risk manager are key persons in deterring claims/lawsuits. The effectiveness of the program depends on prompt notice by the physician to the risk manager of any event that might conceivably give rise to the claim against the physician or the hospital.
Defendant's reimbursement is available for time away from your practice for court appearances for a professional liability suit.