Professional Indemnity Insurance for Doctors

Professional indemnity insurance for Doctors (also known as medical indemnity, practice indemnity or malpractice insurance) is a legal requirement if you wish to register to practise medicine in Australia.

The legislation requiring Doctors to have adequate professional indemnity insurance cover was brought in to protect both Doctors and their patients. Its purpose is to make sure that there are funds available to pay adequate compensation should you make a mistake in your diagnosis or treatment of a patient. Since the consequences of a mistake could be very severe, leading to permanent disability or even death of a patient, the damages awarded against you in a successful negligence claim could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more.

Claims against you could include:

• You made the wrong diagnosis, leaving the patient’s true condition undiagnosed and negatively impacting the outcome for the patient.
• You failed to follow up on test results that indicated the patient had a condition requiring treatment.
• You prescribed or administered an inappropriate treatment, causing harm to the patient.
• You failed to give a patient due warning of all the risks involved in a treatment or procedure and to get their informed consent.
• You made a mistake during a procedure or in the dosage of a treatment, causing harm to the patient.
• You were negligent in your after-care of the patient, causing them harm.

As a Doctor you also have a very strict duty of confidentiality to your patients. If you (or one of your employees) shared personal information about one of your patients or their medical status with a third party without their permission, the consequences could be severe both for them and for you.

A Cosmetic Surgeon performed a rhinoplasty procedure to correct what the patient perceived to be defects in the shape of their nose. A week after the surgery the client contracted a serious infection, which led to chronic sinusitis. The sinusitis failed to respond to treatment and ultimately required costly additional surgery.

The patient filed a negligence suit against the Doctor for the cost of the additional surgery, claiming that the infection was caused by poor after-care following the procedure and that the Doctor had failed to advise him of the risk of serious sinus infection prior to the surgery.

The negligence claim was dismissed, as the Doctor was able to prove that the patient had been given a booklet listing all the risks in detail, and that the patient had signed a consent form indicating that they had received and understood this information. It was also found that the Doctor had given the patient clear instructions on the care of the wound, which they had not followed on returning home after the surgery.

The Doctor incurred $26,000 in legal costs in defending the unsuccessful negligence claim, which were were covered by his professional indemnity insurance. The excess payable on the claim was just $[xx].