By Dan Reale Many medical professionals neglect to have a regular check-up on their malpractice insurance. A check-up can be accomplished in a very short period of time, requires no office visit, and no fee should be charged for the service. Malpractice insurance is often misunderstood – and many feel that “if it is not
By Matt Gracey The Florida legislature will decide this year about a new proposal from a group in Georgia that is trying to eliminate the tort system for medical-malpractice cases. They propose to create what they describe as a system similar to but operationally different than our workers’ compensation system. They are luring doctors into
By Steve Whalen By now you have surely seen those odd looking black and white squares in magazines, newspapers, on signs, and online? They’re called QR codes (abbreviated from Quick Response code). First designed for the automotive industry by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 for the purpose of tracking parts, they have recently become
By Matt Gracey No matter the election results, one of the political “no-brainers” of 2012 and on seems to be the continued push of the government to combat Medicare fraud. After some 30 years of crunching a wealth of internal data, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has extensively analyzed outcome numbers and
By Robert E. White, Jr., Sr. Vice President, Regional Operating Officer The Doctors Company/FPIC Yet another large verdict has been rendered against a bare Florida doctor. Most recently, in September 2011, a jury found an OB/GYN and his professional association responsible for failing to detect physical disabilities of a child before it was born and
By Matt Gracey Often in medicine’s tort-reform efforts, we get so focused on the politics of changing unfair laws that we lose sight of the low-hanging fruit. How many dollars have gone into trying to convince the politicians to limit the number of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals? How much progress have we really made,
By Matt Gracey Already we are seeing doctors either sell out to hospitals or join mega groups. Many of those hospitals’ doctors enjoy sovereign immunity, as do VA doctors and many other public hospital doctors. Many of the mega groups, at least in South Florida, do not require or even encourage their doctors to be
By: Matt Gracey Many doctors’ employment contracts require malpractice-insurance-policy “tails” to be purchased so as to effectively turn a claims-made policy into a more desirable occurrence form of? coverage. In the last year, for the first time ever, a healthy market for optional stand-alone tail policies has developed. Instead of only being able to purchase
By: Matt Gracey Many doctors’ employment contracts require malpractice-insurance-policy “tails” to be purchased so as to effectively turn a claims-made policy into a more desirable occurrence form of? coverage. In the last year, for the first time ever, a healthy market for optional stand-alone tail policies has developed. Instead of only being able to purchase
Q: With a more difficult, “hard market” predicted to hit Florida’s malpractice insurance market soon, what should we be considering in our medical practice to be prepared? A: Just like creating hurricane plans before the fury of a storm descends upon you, now is a good time to be positioning your practice for the impending