Why I love locum insurance.
Working in financial services you are aware that sometimes that we haven’t had the best of press with certain financial products! Endowments, with profits, PPI etc. It is therefore a real pleasure to be advising on a product, locum insurance, where it meets the needs of your clients and the market place. It is also a real sense of achievement to help medical practices save money on unecessary insurance costs; money that can be reinvested into patient care and essential staffing needs.
Having advised on locum insurance for nearly 8 years I have seen massive changes within this niche industry. Changes I am glad to say have been for the better. 6 year ago I was working for a company who effectively held the monopoly for this type of cover across the UK. In my opinion the policy was insufficient in the level of cover it gave and its premiums were inflated and unfair. Fortunately pretty soon another large company soon started offering this policy at a much more competitive price and 8 years on there are probably 7 or 8 companies like ourselves offering this to the market place.
Locum Insurance is vitally important for any medical practice. It does ‘what it says on the tin’ in the sense it pays for a locum doctor, vet, and medical practitioner in the event they are sick. After all a medical practice cannot close its doors to its customers if someone is ill. Such is the wonder of our NHS! My experience tends to be within the GP industry however we as a company are fortunate to have clients from various health professional companies. In the GP industry specifically it used to be that only the GP Partners would take out this cover either on a group or individual basis. Group cover in my opinion is always better for several reasons. One in most cases it is cheaper but importantly it can be managed centrally, usually by the practice manage,r with their knowledge that each individual has sufficient levels of cover. Often some of these older ‘individual’ plans are woefully inadequate for the costs of employing a locum in 2014. They also do not cover essential absences such as Jury Service, Family cover etc. which are usually standard in a modern policy.
Over the last 8 years there has been a definite trend to now cover all ‘essential’ employees within a medical practice not just the partners. A lot of this has come from GP Practices taking on less partners and employing salaried GP’s who do not have the same responsibilities if off sick. It is therefore in the business’s’ interest to cover these salaried professionals as well as the partners. This also includes essential staff such as Nurse Practitioners and in some cases the Practice Manager themselves.
At GPlocuminsurance.com we are able to act as independent financial advisors. Offering impartial advice on the market place and offer policies from the best providers on the market. Over the last 6 years we have been fortunate to work with many of the companies offering locum insurance and GP locum insurance within the market place. We are therefore perfectly placed to propose policies that will meet individual and practice needs. For a free competitive quote please visit www.gplocuminsurance.com.
Chris Dixon BSc (Hons) Dip PFS
Director Approachable Finance (Medical).
