What's New > SE2 client COPIC Insurance puts its money where its mouth is
Posted 10/19/2007
Colorado’s biggest medical malpractice insurer announces second year of no overall rate increase plus its largest distribution to physicians ever
DENVER – COPIC Insurance Company – which covers more than 80 percent of privately insured Colorado physicians – announced today that there will be no overall rate increase in its physician medical malpractice coverage for 2008.
COPIC also announced today that it will return $12 million in distributions over 2008 to the doctors it insures in Colorado. That translates on average to a 13.5 percent premium credit and brings COPIC’s total distributions to physicians since 1990 to $123.6 million
“This is great news for Colorado’s health care system,” said COPIC Chairman and CEO Ted Clarke, M.D. “Reduced costs for physicians translate into increased health care access for Coloradans.”
Clarke said that factors contributing to the positive rates news included: -COPIC’s 3Rs disclosure and early resolution program, which was recently featured in a New England Journal of Medicine article about a “transformation in how the medical profession communicates with patients about harmful medical errors.” -Colorado’s relatively stable tort reform environment.
“Today’s positive rate and distribution news offers one more example of how Colorado physicians and the patients they treat benefit from this state’s favorable medical liability climate,” Clarke said. Multiple studies confirm that access to care, quality of care, and cost of care are dramatically impacted by the liability environment.
Colorado is one of only eight states that the American Medical Association calls “stable” amid “America’s medical liability crisis.” In Florida, which the AMA has labeled a “crisis” state, OB/GYNs and general surgeons pay more than five times as much for medical liability insurance as their counterparts in Colorado.