Risks Facing Rehabilitation Clinics
When providing rehabilitative treatment, your rehabilitation clinic faces a higher potential for patient injuries than most because of your patients’ pre-existing conditions. And with increasing pressure to treat more patients, your liability risks increase as well. Rehab clinic insurance can protect you and your health clinic from both liability and loss exposures due to errors, oversights, baseless allegations of malpractice and more.
It is rarely the case when one factor leads to a negative patient outcome and more often that overlapping risks converge to create a situation that leads to potential or actual legal liability and malpractice claims against an institution offering rehabilitation services. Factors that typically lead to adverse patient outcomes include:
- Lack of communication between rehabilitation clinic healthcare professionals
- Misdiagnoses and missed diagnoses including failing to appreciate symptoms, test results or declining to order diagnostic testing
- Deficient patient monitoring during rehab sessions
- A failure or delay in referring a patient to a rehab specialist
- Failing to adequately monitor a patient’s medication usage
- Negative experience(s) with staff and/or other patients
These factors can lead to the following scenarios:
- A rehab patient suffers from permanent spinal cord damage due to long-term compression because a cervical MRI was not ordered along with lumbar and thoracic MRIs
- A patient is administered narcotics despite a history of abuse and eventually dies of an overdose
- A rehab therapist failing to take the time to properly read a patient’s file and having the patient perform an exercise that would normally to be used to rehab their injury but results in more serious conditions for this specific patient
- A patient who has recently had surgery falls during physical therapy and sustains further injuries because neither the rehab therapist nor the assistant was standing within reach of the patient
Of course, in rehabilitation therapy, there are several scenarios that can lead to both actual and perceived errors, omissions or negligence.
Basic Rehab Center Health Care Insurance Coverages
Medical Malpractice Insurance – which is available as either per occurrence or claims-made coverage.
Commercial General Liability Insurance – can provide protection against personal injury claims (unrelated to rehab treatment) as well as allegations of property damage, libel/slander and false advertising.
Both medical malpractice and commercial general liability insurance can protect rehab infirmary by providing coverage for:
- Lawyer’s charge
- Legal defence costs
- Out-of-court settlements
- Awards for damages
Types of Rehab Health Care Services Institutions that can Benefit from Rehab Center Insurance
Among the benefits rehabilitation practitioners can enjoy from our customizable rehab insurance plan in Toronto, Ontario include:
- Art therapists
- Audiologists
- Behaviour therapists
- Case managers
- Chiropractors
- Cognitive behavioural therapists
- Dieticians
- Lifecare/life skills planners
- Mindful meditation and yoga therapists
- Music therapists
- Occupational therapists
- Personal support workers
- Physiatrists
- Physiotherapists
- Psychological therapists
- Recreational therapists
- Speech and language therapists
- Vocational rehabilitation therapists
The above list is not exhaustive. If your healthcare facility or practise involves rehabilitation patient care, rehab insurance can be tailored to meet your liability and risk management needs.
Other Coverages Recommended for Rehab Facilities
Commercial Property Insurance & Extra Expense Insurance, Umbrella Liability Insurance, Cyber Liability & Privacy Insurance, Equipment Breakdown Insurance, and Employment Practices Liability (EPL) Insurance.
We are commercial risk management experts because commercial insurance is all we do
At ALIGNED, we specialize in commercial insurance and use the relationships we’ve built over the years with Canada’s top insurance companies to get our clients comprehensive rehab health care facility insurance at affordable rates. Contact an ALIGNED advocate to get a free quote on rehab centre insurance in minutes or get started right away by using our free online tool.
