We’re offering a Risk Management Seminar in Las Vegas, NV, The Impact of Professional Liability Litigation on Physicians and Opportunities to Reduce Risk, on Friday, July 20, 2012. We believe the issue of litigation stress is an important one.  In this seminar, we help you with this issue.  Here’s the link to our website with details http://www.psychprogram.com/seminars/. You’ll note that the seminar is open to both psychiatrists and neurologists, whether you’re our customers or not. Current customers can attend the seminar free of charge.  If you’ve never had any experience with us, this is your chance to see PRMS at its best.

PRMS’s approach to risk management is simply stated: supporting you in providing good clinical care. We don’t believe that there are magic formulas, “bulletproof” forms and “one size fits all” models for providing good patient care.    

We provide our advice in print, online and, perhaps most effectively, in our Risk Management Seminars. Time and time again, the physicians we serve tell us that they want more seminars, in more venues. We hear them, and we’re acting on what we heard.

We hope that what you learn at the seminar won’t “stay in Vegas,” as the saying goes, but rather you’ll take what you learn back to your offices, clinics and hospitals and spread the word. Come and see what your colleagues rave about.   Email us for more information or to register.

I returned to the office yesterday from the 2012 Annual Meeting. While this meeting was unique in that we weren’t on the exhibit floor, we still had the opportunity to meet with many of our customers. I had the following thoughts, observations, and reactions (in no particular order).

Thanks to everyone who made their way to our hospitality suite in the Ritz Carlton Hotel. We had the chance to speak with you, answer your questions, and update your policies if needed in a setting quieter than the usual exhibit hall venue.

It was gratifying to see that more than 100 of our customers attended our two risk management seminars (Friday, May 4 and Wednesday, May 9).

Despite the many changes in the practice of psychiatry in the 26 years that PRMS has been providing liability coverage to psychiatrists, their concerns remain very similar. How can I protect patient confidentiality? What are the elements of good informed consent? How long should I keep my records? How can I effectively use the latest technology in my practice without undue risk?

Despite the best planning, there are always surprises. For example, several doctors had difficulty getting to the Sofitel Hotel for the Friday seminar because the police had closed several streets in the area to facilitate the filming of a movie. (Sorry – I don’t know the title.)  On Sunday, the Broad Street Run created a human barricade for other doctors attempting to reach our hospitality suite at the Ritz-Carlton (on Broad Street).

Speaking of contingency planning, our risk managers were available to assist psychiatrists in creating a contingency plan for their practice.  If you were not able to meet with us, you can reach our risk managers by calling 1-800-527-9181.

Increasingly, training directors want to incorporate into their programs sessions on the basics of liability insurance and risk management for their residents.  We left Philadelphia with a long follow-up list to nail down dates for our risk management staff to speak with residents.   To schedule a PREP session for your program, email or call 1-800-245-3333, ext. 347.

Finally, we are grateful to all our customers, whether they made it to Philadelphia or not, for giving us the chance to work with the most unappreciated yet dedicated group of specialists in American medicine.   Call us at 1-800-245-3333 at any time and let us know how we can help.

Many of PRMS’ staff travel to meet our customers at exhibits, seminars, receptions and educational events.   Our customers get used to seeing their faces, and they become, collectively, the “face” of PRMS.  There are also PRMS faces you don’t see, but they are just as important to our operations. We would not be successful without them.

Spring is one of our busiest times of the year, and our back office is always going full speed.  Just last week we had four large mailings scheduled to go out the same day. This was the day that the bulk printer broke, the folding machine decided to be stubborn, and the postage machine thought it had run out of ink despite having just been filled. A call went out to the staff that all hands were needed to get the mailings out. Staff from every department responded, some who didn’t even know we had a “folding machine.” Printers were swapped around, human hands assisted replaced the folder machine,  and we used old-fashioned stamps, moistened and affixed by staff rather than the confused postage meter, to get the mailings out the door and to the local post office before it closed.

Next time you see a PRMS staff person on the road, remember that there are more back in the office, making sure that you have what you need, when you need it. We all owe them our gratitude for their contributions.

Sooner or later, almost every resident is going to consider working a few hours a week in a setting completely separate from his or her training program. But we also know that some doctors in salaried employment (academia, government agencies, administrative positions, etc.)  want to moonlight in clinical work. In our experience, many “moonlighters” don’t plan for covering their liability exposure in their moonlight practice.

Some employers, realizing that most prospective moonlighters don’t have their own liability coverage,   agree to see if their own liability coverage can be extended to the part-time practitioners. If a prospective employer can handle it that way, it’s easier for the moonlighter.  Other factors, however, besides ease should be forefront in the moonlighting doctor’s mind.  Consider that that some practices may only cover employees and not contractors.  A moonlighting doctor should confirm their employment status and coverage with the employer.

Since you’re likely to be working in this part-time capacity for a short time, I suggest you consider purchasing your own part-time policy.

Let’s say you start working at a clinic for 6 hours a week and the clinic management agrees to add you to their policy. You know that it’s important to ask about the kind of coverage the clinic has in place, and you’re a little concerned when you’re told it’s a claims made policy. The business manager, however, assures you that they intend to purchase a tail policy if they ever terminate coverage, but “we’re doing very well, and we intend to keep renewing the policy indefinitely.” During the year you work there, you see several hundred patients.

You end your part-time work and move on with your professional life a couple hundred miles away. Unknown to you, the year after you leave, the clinic runs into financial trouble, declares bankruptcy and is unable to purchase a tail policy. You now have no coverage for the patients you saw during that time. This is not good.

If you purchase your own coverage, you control the policy. Before you take on a part-time practice, make sure you have coverage for it. Have questions? Contact us.  We are happy to walk you through a decision that makes sense for you.

Professional education of all kinds today (medicine, law, accounting, etc.) is focused on providing students with exposure to the professional information they need to succeed. Unfortunately, there’s little time left to expose them to the very practical information they need to use their expertise to make a living. For example, many lawyers, after three years in law school, bar review classes, and the bar exam itself, don’t know where the local courthouse is.

Medicine has a particular challenge because of the limitations imposed on the number of hours residents can spend “on the job.” Didactics, clinic training and everything else has to be shoe-horned into a rigid schedule.  Still, a resident needs to have certain basic practical knowledge to be successful, whether he or she plans to practice solo, or join a group practice, or create a unique blend of practice settings.

From our point of view, one essential body of knowledge needed for success in any setting is a basic understanding of the US tort law system, the role of professional liability insurance in protecting the doctor’s practice, and the basics of good risk management as an aid to good patient care.  Some residency programs attempt to address this need with a series of “transition to practice” sessions in PGY-4, but often residents have made critical decisions about their future by the time these sessions are offered.

It’s never too late to learn, however, and PRMS wants to make it easy for residents to learn the basics. You can email us at to request a complimentary copy of Medical Professional Liability Insurance: A Practitioner’s Primer (published by PIAA – for more information about them, visit www.thepiaa.org). Your training director (or whoever is responsible for arranging such things in your program) can also invite us to speak with you and your colleagues; there’s no charge for our service, and it is NOT a sales pitch – just an introduction to key concepts and vocabulary that you need to get off to a good start.

And, most timely, you can visit with us during the APA Annual Meeting, whether you are registered for it or not. Here’s a list of our activities during the meeting. We are always more than happy to speak with residents. The meeting is in Philadelphia this year, a short drive or ride on Amtrak from anywhere between Richmond, VA and Boston, MA.

You are welcome to drop in, but if you want to let us know you’re coming, email us at TheProgram@prms.com. We’ll be looking for you and have a package of information ready.

Very definitely yes, but not in the usual way.

This year, the APA advised PRMS that we would not be able to exhibit at the Annual Meeting. But we will be in Philadelphia to meet with our current customers, provide risk management education, and talk to prospective customers about our services.

We have posted our full schedule of events on our website. Note that we have two Risk Management Seminars scheduled, book-ending the Annual Meeting with one on Friday, May 4 immediately followed by a Risk Management Open House, and an encore presentation of this seminar on Wednesday, May 9.

We were able to reserve meeting space at the Ritz Carlton Philadelphia, 10 Avenue of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA 19102, Shuttle Bus Route 2-Red so that you can meet with our staff including risk managers, underwriters, litigation specialists and others. If you’d like to speak with us at a specific time, please email us at TheProgram@prms.com. We’ll confirm your appointment. Of course, you can also drop by any time if you prefer.

PRMS offers our services and expertise to psychiatrists to help them maximize patient safety which will minimize professional liability risk. We insure more APA members than any of our competitors – combined.

We have attended every Annual Meeting since May ’87. The tradition continues – we will be there for you in Philadelphia! We hope to see you there.

PRMS has been in its current location for 13 years. A few years ago, having outgrown the space we originally occupied at 1515 Wilson Boulevard, we took a short-term lease on some additional space on a different floor to house our growing Risk Management department. Our intent, however, was to find suitable space where our entire staff could be accommodated on the same floor once our primary lease expired. We have accomplished that, and we’re moving . . . one block down the street.

Effective Monday, March 26, our mailing address will be 1401 Wilson Boulevard, and our entire staff will be located in Suite 700. Everything else remains the same – same zip code, same toll-free number, same direct-dial phone numbers, same email addresses, same staff, same website, same commitment to serving the needs of our customers for professional liability insurance and risk management consultation. We will also have room to grow in the newly leased space, as the number of our customers and their needs for service increase.

Everyone has moved at some point or another, and we all know that despite our best planning, moves rarely happen without a glitch or two. Here’s what we already know:

• We know that we will not have phone service on Friday, March 23, as our phone service vendors switch service from the old location to the new one.

• We have also been told that our phone service may be out until noon on Monday, March 26.

Our email should remain up, uninterrupted. Our website will also remain online, with the exception of the on-line payment service and the “My Program” page. Those are expected to be back online on Monday, March 26.

Our Risk Management, Claims and Underwriting staff will be monitoring email during the day Friday, March 23 and on Monday, March 26. That’s the best way to contact us during the move.

We will keep you posted via our website of any last minute changes or glitches we experience. If necessary we will post cell phone numbers where you can reach us on Monday if our regular service is not restored by noon.

Finally, I thank you for trusting PRMS to provide you with professional liability insurance. I ask for your patience over the next few days, and I apologize for the inconvenience of our interrupted phone service. If you want to contact me directly during the move, please email me at tracy@prms.com.