Written by Sarah Lim Lic# 0M52397

Physicians and healthcare professionals such as Nurse Practitioners and Physicians Assistants may have recently been required to pivot from the routine in-office care that was the norm due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  With this our agency has received many inquiries about telemedicine for their practice or for their side practice.  This blog will discuss some of the ways physicians and healthcare providers can secure telemedicine coverage for their practice or side practice.

The list below will lay out some of the ways to ensure you have the coverage for telemedicine.  You must contact your agent or insurance company to ensure your telemedicine coverage is applicable.  You may also review your policy details to ensure the language provides coverage for telemedicine.

1.     Coverage is already included in your policy!  Often, because your risk classification is rated for your specialty, the scope of care that you provide over the phone or in-office is no different, thus the insurance companies deem this to not increase risk, given some best practice protocols.  Ensure this is the case by contacting your agent or insurance company for clarification.

2.     Coverage is included for an additional premium.  Sometimes insurance companies do not rate telemedicine exposure within their initial premium, in order to best provide a tailored policy with no under exposures.  For this reason, they will request an endorsement to add to the policy language, often for an additional premium.

3.     Coverage is not provided because you are employed and medical malpractice insurance is provided by the employer.  Often in these cases, healthcare providers would like to provide services outside the employers realm of services.  If this is the case, the provider would need to obtain their own policy.