TU-A-206-02: Is Professional Liability Insurance Really Necessary.
Professional liability insurance is an important tool to manage risks to a medical physicist's assets that can result from errors or omissions in the course of professional practice. AAPM has partnered with Mercer Consumer to offer coverage tailored to the professional activities and specific risks encountered in medical physics practice. This program has specific eligibility criteria, benefit options, exclusions, and enrollment options for both self-employed medical physicists and those who practice in an employment setting. There are important nuances to the form of coverage chosen and the determination of the coverage period for individual policies. The need for and role of professional liability insurance varies for each individual physicist, and one of the most important factors is the physicist's employment or self-employment status and involvement in consulting activities. This session will provide an overview of the AAPM-sponsored program (administered by Mercer) and the various options available to consulting and employed physicists. The fundamental concepts of professional liability insurance in general will be reviewed, and the roles of occurrence and claims-made coverage forms within the AAPM program will be explained. Information drawn from claims data from the AAPM program will be used to illustrate the role of professional liability insurance benefits in realistic cases involving losses and liabilities due to errors and omissions in medical physics practice.


LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Explain how professional liability insurance protects a medical physicist in the event of a lawsuit. 2. Understand the basic concepts of the professional liability insurance coverage forms: occurrence and claims-made. 3. Explain AAPM's professional liability insurance program for the consulting and non-consulting medical physicist. 4. Understand the recent claim/expense data from AAPM's professional liability insurance program. Graham Fuller is an employee of Mercer Consumer.