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PI insurance
How many civil claims?
From Mr J. Sharp, HonMRPharmS
That Mark Koziol (PJ, 14 December 2002, p844) should be a staunch
advocate of personal indemnity insurance is entirely unsurprising. He
is a director of a company that sells insurance of this type.
What might well cause the raising of the odd quizzical eyebrow is his
assertion that "the vast majority of civil claims against pharmacists
are settled out of court".
A proposition in these terms strongly implies that there is a considerable
total number of civil claims made against pharmacists, for it would be
distinctly absurd, say, to refer to two out of three as a "vast majority".
Perhaps Mr Koziol could tell us the number of civil claims made against
pharmacists per year, and what, exactly, is that "vast majority"?
John Sharp
Woodley, Berkshire
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MARK KOZIOL, director, The Pharmacy Insurance Agency, replies:
The Pharmacy Insurance Agency is only one of the pharmacy defence
organisations and I will therefore have knowledge of only a proportion
of the whole. Furthermore it can take some years before a final
outcome on an incident becomes apparent. Additionally, approximately
50 per cent of error incidents that initially look like they
will result in a civil claim never do so because insured persons
act
promptly on advice given to them by their defence organisation
and take proactive measures to minimise the chances of an incident
going any further.
However, subject to those considerations I can confirm that in
2000, I am aware of 164 incidents that did lead to civil claims
being made against pharmacists, of which 148 were settled out of
court; this by anyone's reckoning is a vast majority. Fortunately,
there were no expensive landmark test cases fought in the courts
that year, the largest claim being for just over £20,000 and half
of that was settled by the prescriber's insurer. Despite that,
by the time all the cases will have been finally settled it is
estimated that the total cost of claims for that year will be well
in excess of £200,000. There is still a small number of more complex
cases outstanding from that year and as yet it is uncertain as
to whether they will end up in court.
Risk management is all about anticipating errors or studying
their causes once they occur and then making changes in practice
so as to minimise the chances of their occurrence in the future.
Pharmacists wishing to learn more about how to deal with an error
once it has occurred or, ideally, how to help prevent one from
occurring in the first place should consider attending one of the
PIA risk management seminars which are usually held at local Royal
Pharmaceutical Society branch or other meetings in various locations
throughout the United Kingdom. |
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