Your dental office probably has a business owner’s policy (BOP) which provides basic insurance coverage for your business. This includes important forms of coverage:
- General liability
- Commercial property
- Business interruption
- Employment practices liability
That’s a good start, but it’s not nearly enough to truly protect your practice. Your dental office has specific liabilities and concerns that a standard BOP can’t cover.
Here are other important insurance coverages your office needs:
Entity Malpractice
Dentists, like other healthcare providers, have personal malpractice coverage to protect you in lawsuits. But that’s just the start of the malpractice insurance you need. Your practice (the office itself) needs its own protection, and that comes from entity malpractice coverage.
If your office is named in a lawsuit, this insurance helps pay the legal fees and potential damages owed.
Cyber Liability Insurance
Your dental office handles a lot of personal information: social security numbers, addresses and contact info, dental insurance information, and payment details. And believe it or not, cybercriminals would love to get their hands on that data. Data breaches aren’t reserved for banks and big box stores. Small businesses and medical practices are at risk, too.
You may be surprised at what you’re required to do and pay for if your office is ever the victim of a data breach. It’s a lot. Cyber liability insurance will pay for the costs associated with a data breach: credit monitoring, notifying victims, PR expenses, and potential legal settlements.
Equipment Breakdown
This isn’t the Middle Ages. If your dental equipment breaks down, you’re not going to pull out pliers to deal with toothaches or use ivory or wood in dentures. Your practice depends on working equipment or you can’t help patients. Each day expensive equipment is out of commission, you have hurting patients and less income.
Equipment breakdown can help you get back to filling cavities faster. This insurance coverage helps repair broken-down equipment or replace what can’t be fixed.
Crime Insurance
You want to believe that everyone working in your dental office is an honest, upstanding person. But even with the best hiring practices, someone willing to steal from you or your patients could be hired.
Crime insurance coverage can help you recover from the loss to your dental office due to theft, forgery, embezzlement, or fraud by an employee.
Commercial Umbrella
Most insurance policies can easily cover run-of-the-mill claims. The kinds of things that are common or easy to repair, in terms of damages owed. But every so often there will be a claim that’s too big for your standard policy. Your policy limit will be reached but there’s still money to be paid out – whether it’s a lawsuit from an injured patient or a disgruntled employee.
Umbrella insurance helps those larger-than-life claims by providing additional liability coverage. It’s an affordable way to give yourself extra protection when you need it most.
Are you figuring out you might not have enough insurance coverage for your dental office? Have questions about the policies you currently have? Contact Charlotte Insurance today. We’ll help you protect your practice so you can spend your time focusing on patients instead of how you’ll pay when things go wrong.