In today’s world most dentists need to be aware of their exposure to risk and this inevitably leads to questions about the adequacy of insurance. If you do not have good rounded dental surgery insurance you could be facing potentially ruinous costs in some circumstances.

How could this happen?

It is perhaps worth thinking for a moment or two of the risks you face on a day–to-day basis:

• Building problems. Natural disasters and sheer bad luck can leave you not only with large repair bills but also rob you of your normal place of work and very possibly your income for the period it is out of action.
• Contents troubles. You very likely have expensive and specialist equipment in your office and surgery. If it is stolen or accidentally damaged you could face major costs for repair, replacement and short-term rentals.
• Staff accidents. If you employ staff and they suffer injury due to an accident then you can expect to be held accountable – in fact, insuring against this through employers liability insurance is usually a legal requirement.
• Public liability. If a patient or someone with them suffers an accident while they’re in your surgery, you may face a hefty compensation claim and a high court award against you in some situations.
• Malpractice. This is a large subject in modern medical circles. Rightly or wrongly, society is increasingly inclined to hold medical professionals to be accountable for their errors or even for poor advice. The costs here can be extremely high in severe cases and the legal costs of defending yourself equally so.
• People issues. Claims for gender, ageist or racial discrimination, sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour are no longer the rarity they once were. Once again here the legal and indirect costs of defending yourself could be very high indeed.

Much general insurance will not cope with these issues. Assessing your risk profile and ensuring that you have the appropriate professional and business operational insurances in place is a specialised task.

There are specialist providers of dental surgery insurance who can help protect you by covering these sometimes hard-to-place risks. Contrary to popular myth, they are not fixated on ‘the selling’. If you look for one of the larger companies in this field that offers consultation and advice, you will be able to obtain a quick and free ‘check-up’ on the status of your cover.

It may be that in fact you are already adequately covered and have no further need for specialist dental surgery insurance. If that’s the case you will be able to sleep a little more easily. If not and you have identified shortcomings in your cover, you can at least then decide what your options are. It may be worth thinking about.

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