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Australian doctors may lose malpractice insurance
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SYDNEY — According to the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review, Australia's biggest medical malpractice insurer fears it will collapse, leaving 60% of Australia's doctors without malpractice coverage, after the Federal Government rejected its pleas for assistance.
Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, told the medical malpractice insurer United Medical Protection that the Australian Government will not help it due to "the continuing deterioration in the group's financial position."
United Medical Protection indemnifies about 32,000 of Australia's general practitioners and specialists.
Stephen Cains, MD, a practicing ophthalmologist in Australia, is concerned about the current situation. "This threatens ophthalmologists and medical practitioners at a very personal level," Dr. Cains told Ocular Surgery News.
"If your background is not covered by any government rescue package, and if we assume that United Medical Protection is not going to be able to cover what it has the basis for doing, then it leaves open the possibility that anyone who is sued now for an event that happened years ago, of which the particular doctor had no knowledge, that doctor is going to be personally liable."
Malpractice settlements commonly hit the six figure and sometimes seven figure mark at times, Dr. Cains said. "Doctors can be quite ruined."
Without the government's financial assistance, including assistance in securing personal liability insurance for its directors and senior executives, 8,000 doctors could be left without coverage after June 30. Faced with the prospect of losing a chunk of its income from those 8,000 policies, United Medical Protection could be forced to close. If that happens, doctors would be unable to work in private practice unless they could make other insurance arrangements.