MDU indemnity insurance Rip Off?

har0ld

My wife is a fairly recently qualified NHS Consultant - what on earth could we be complaining about you may ask?!Well like many people we find our home in negative equity and since I have been redundant/house husband for the last 2 years we have the usual debts that now need to be paid off.
So as my chance of getting back into meaningful full time employment, in the short term, is slight we have been looking into how my wife (now worse off as a consultant than she was previously as a trainee registrar) could boost her income.
Working in the private sector was the idea until we discovered the ludicrous situation with the MDU indemnity insurance that she must have. In short it means that as soon as my wife does more than £8000 of private practice (gross) the indemnity premium leaps from £800pa to £15,000pa why? how can this be justified? is there an alternative? why isn't indemnity calculated on a pro-rata basis?:(

rs65

Does it have to be with MDU?

Could she buy medical malpractice insurance through a broker?

dacouch

Unfortunately Professional Indemnity Insurance is expensive.

You also need to bear in mind that unlike say car insurance that covers incidents that actually occur in the twelve months of your cover. with PI insurance it covers claims that have been reported during the period of insurance.

Basically if your partner took out twelve months cover today and a patient made a claim in 13 months time for something that happened 10 months ago your partner would not be covered UNLESS thay had renewed cover / taken cover with another company.

Realistically if she started private practice and then stopped in say 2 years time, it would be prudent to continue cover for a 3 or 5 years after they stop (The premiums do reduce to reflect the reduced risk of no longer practicing

har0ld

Its not so much the price of the cover but more that there is this enormous leap in cost from £800 to suddenly £15,000! There is no in between, no sliding scale - why does doing more than roughly 60 hours private work make you nearly 20X more risky all of a sudden??!!

casper_g

har0ld wrote: »

Its not so much the price of the cover but more that there is this enormous leap in cost from £800 to suddenly £15,000! There is no in between, no sliding scale - why does doing more than roughly 60 hours private work make you nearly 20X more risky all of a sudden??!!

Does the Medical Protection Society have the same weird jump in its pricing?

mjm3346

Insurance cover for up to £8,000 of private work is provided as part of the membership package so that for occasional work outside the NHS you do not need to take out "additional" insurance. Exceed £8,000 and you start to pay for insurance and £15,000 may be the start level. (Bit like driving a £1,000,000 car you do not own on the insurance on your VW or insuring it yourself, goes from cheap to unaffordable)

har0ld

Right, discovered all sorts of info. MPS still quite dear however if no Obstetrics being undertaken PMP appears to give best rates and tailored cover (typical saving over MDU 30-40%). Also heard that MDU cover becomes discretionary upon retirement!! so an old case can come and bite you on the butt 5-10 years down the line and suddenly the cover you thought you had and paid for is removed!!
Any thoughts anyone?