Why your business needs medical staffing agency insurance
The shortage of trained medical professionals is a global reality. Medical staffing agencies play a pivotal role in assisting facilities in meeting these demands.
Healthcare staffing agencies specialize in working with professionals from diverse profiles, including nurses, therapists, doctors, and support staff. They work with a wide range of organizations including hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes. Additionally, they collaborate with entities outside the healthcare sector, such as universities, schools, assisted living facilities, and the prison ecosystem. Each of these organizations faces a unique set of hazards, based on its nature of work and specific needs.
A client organization may sue a medical staffing agency because of the negligent behavior of one of the recruits. Similarly, an individual recruit may take legal action against the agency due to a poor recruitment experience. Various other incidents can also pose financial risks to a healthcare manpower agency.
Having access to Medical Staffing Agency Insurance is essential to shield your business from potential financial repercussions. Here we outline the possible hazards that your business may encounter and the proactive measures that can help you overcome them.
Potential Business Risks
Here’s a snapshot of possible scenarios that may disrupt the smooth functioning of your business:
- Your employees injured themselves on your office premises and are unable to report to work for several weeks. They want to be compensated for their medical expenses.
- An employee tweets from your company’s official handle, alleging that a competing business does not perform thorough reference checks. As a result, the business is now suing your agency for loss of reputation.
- A partner organization believes your services did not meet their standards. They sue your business for incorrect and incompetent advice. You need to hire a lawyer and prepare to pay for damages if the ruling goes against your business.
- Your office is completely vandalized during a riot. There is extensive damage to furniture, electronics, and appliances. Office operations are disrupted until you can get things up and running.
- Your agency is battling a cybersecurity breach. Confidential details of your staffing client risk being made public.
Access to medical / healthcare staffing agency insurance may not be able to protect your business in every scenario. But it can come to the rescue in common scenarios that impact medical staffing agencies.
Types of medical staffing agency insurance
Here is a list of the key types of medical staffing agency insurance you must consider to pave the way for coverage of major financial risks:
General Liability Insurance
Every staffing business requires general liability insurance, a basic category that protects your business from third-party lawsuits. Typically, there are three types of third-party lawsuits. One is bodily injuries that are sustained in your premises. Two, if your business is responsible for the damage to the property of a third party. Three, a third party sues you for advertising injuries such as libel and slander.
General liability insurance helps pay for defense costs, court fees, and the cost of settlements/judgments in any of the above scenarios.
Business Owner's Policy (BOP)
Property refers to furniture, appliances, electronics, and building damage, which are all important for the smooth functioning of your business. A BOP policy helps to protect your business from property damage. It also covers third-party lawsuits.
BOP covers property damage that occurs due to specific incidents such as vandalism, fire damage, wind damage, lightning, and theft. But it does not cover natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. It also does not cover property damage that has occurred due to neglect of equipment or buildings.
Professional Liability Insurance
The medical staffing industry plays an important role in helping various facilities find the right staff to support their operations. However, if things go wrong it may impact human lives, the reputation of the facility, and the financials of partner organizations.
Manpower agencies are also subject to lawsuits filed by staffing recruits. Partner organizations may also sue them with claims such as misrepresentation, poor quality of services, undelivered services, incorrect advice, and inability to deliver as per deadlines. Professional Liability Insurance covers all these scenarios and helps pay for defense fees, court fees, and judgments/ settlements.
Workers' Compensation Insurance
This is insurance mandated by various states to help protect workers. Workers' compensation insurance helps when employees need to be compensated when sustaining injuries or illnesses due to professional hazards. It helps pay for the cost of hospitalization, medical expenses, and a percentage of lost wages.
In the event of a casualty, workers' compensation insurance offers death benefit to the employee’s next of kin. In case an employee sues your company, additional employee liability coverage helps pay for defense costs, and settlements/ judgments.
Cyber Insurance
Your company may be using multiple software to run operations smoothly. These cloud-based solutions store large amounts of confidential staffing and business data online. Hence, your business is prone to cyberattacks that can result in data leaks.
Purchasing cyber insurance is an important risk management strategy. It helps pay for client notification expenses, investigations into the breach, legal fees, fines, and the cost of fraud monitoring.
Cost of Medical Staffing Agency Insurance
The cost of medical staffing agency insurance depends upon multiple factors related to your business, as follows:
- The type of partner facilities that use your services
- The scale and profile of recruits, medical domains covered, and geographical footprint
- Number of your employees
- Footfalls of visitors to your place of business, and the size of your business premises
Summing Up
Purchasing medical staffing agency insurance is an investment in the financial well-being and sustainability of your business. Your agency can partner with an experienced insurance provider and access comprehensive insurance to meet your protection needs.