Coverage for in-office and volunteer services – COA-sponsored malpractice insurance

Whether you are seeing patients in your office or providing volunteer care at a health fair, the COA-sponsored malpractice insurance plan is there to protect you.

Lawsuits happen. Whether you are paid for your work, or are providing services to help less fortunate members of the community, a patient may feel that you have harmed them in some way and make a claim against you. 

Perhaps a patient slips, falls and breaks several bones wearing their new progressive lenses and looks for compensation from you. Maybe a degenerative disorder goes undetected in an exam and the patient claims that their vision was adversely affected because treatment was delayed. You can be the subject of legal action even if there is no merit to the claim, and you didn’t do anything wrong. Defending yourself can be very expensive, even if the claim itself is frivolous.  

COA, working together with our broker partner Mercer, ensures that any malpractice (also called professional liability) insurance policy offered to our membership covers you while practicing within the scope of your license, giving you the freedom to practice where you want to.  As long as you have received the proper training and/or certification required, all procedures approved by the California State Board of Optometry are covered.

Protection is available for up to $2 million per occurrence, and $4 million aggregate per year.  This means any one incident is covered up to $2 million and if more than one incident occurs in the same year there is up to $4 million of coverage available. Legal fees and court costs associated with claims against you are paid in addition to your limits of liability.

Don’t rely solely upon your employer’s malpractice coverage, especially if you do charity or other work outside of your employer. There may be gaps in the policy, you may be sued after you have left your employer, and most employer-provided coverage does not cover you for actions outside of the workplace.

For more information, contact a Mercer Client Advisor at 800-775-2020, or visit www.COAMemberInsurance.com.
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