Checking Off Our List
Some years feel bigger than others, and while I can only speak from personal experience, 2024 was certainly a year filled to the brim. Just focusing in on our corner of the professional world, the MPL industry has seen tort reform, legislative changes, mergers, financial turns, and the like hitting every corner of the industry. We had our work cut out for us, and now that we are coming to the end of the year, there is much to be celebrated. Leaders from across our MPL division will share highlights throughout this issue.
On a personal note, I wanted to once again take advantage of the theme of this issue to say thank you to the many people who work behind the scenes who create this magazine each and every month.
I would, of course, start with thanks to you, our agency partners, for your regular feedback and communication so we can focus our efforts where they would achieve the greatest results.
And of course, thanks to our MPL leadership who is so often sharing that feedback, agreeing to interviews, and passing along reports and resources for their teams as part of our content process. In particular I will call out Steve Dapkus, SVP, Marketing & Risk Management, who manages the teams and oversees production from an executive standpoint.
I will also call out Mace Horoff of Medical Sales Training and Aaron Hamming, Director, Risk Management Data Analytics and Technology, who provide ongoing monthly columns. The Risk Management department also goes above and beyond in assisting with research and content production for many of our issues.
Next we have the Communications team who takes on compiling, writing, and editing all of the content each month.
- Kristen Hensley, Communications Supervisor
- Scott Spinola, Senior Communications Coordinator
- Emily Aysse, Communications Specialist
- Kaelin O'Reilly, Communications Specialist
From there, content travels to the Digital Marketing team who puts together the online version of each issue and sends it out to our audience.
- Andrew Segura, Digital Marketing Supervisor
- Bethany Kurzynowski, Digital Marketing Specialist
- Christa Jennings, Marketing Intern
Our teams work closely with the Creative Services team who creates all the graphics and manages the print version of each of our issues.
- Erica Hess, Manager, Creative Services
- Kat McPeak, Creative Services Coordinator
- Erik Seelman, Graphic Design Specialist
And finally, no project from our teams can be completed without assistance from our Compliance/Legal team.
- Katie Neville, Chief Compliance Officer
- Andrea Koehler, Senior Legal Counsel
True to form, the team is already hard at work on our 2025 editorial calendar—producing multiple issues simultaneously as we go. I cannot wait for you to see what we have planned. And, as always, please feel encouraged to send your content requests our way.
2024 in Review
As we close 2024, I would characterize our market as consistent. Trends affecting healthcare continue with entity ownership growing, and the small group practice of medicine fading away. Even when we think a physician group is independent, they are more often owned by a hospital, trust, or private equity group.
Growth in the corporate organization of medicine increases the need for Specialty solutions for insuring those entities. ProAssurance is excellently positioned to deliver those solutions offering coverage across the full spectrum of healthcare practice. Perhaps naturally, many traditional MPL carriers want a part of that business as they see their bases erode. The same mistakes made with initial expansion of the MPL carriers in the 1990s are occurring today. They simply don’t appreciate the real risks being assumed.
Within our core markets competition remains fierce, though we have observed single-digit rate increases in many more venues in 2024. Margins are small, and we expect industry combined ratios to continue above 100% once 2024 results are tallied.
We are very pleased with the progress we have made in achieving our goals and particularly in the work we have done to be your Carrier of Choice. As you read this note, you will have access to a completely redesigned and improved web portal. Your ability to self-serve will be dramatically enhanced. Your online requests can often be instantly fulfilled, and if further approvals are needed, the status of each will be easily followed. While these and other enhancements are important, this new platform will serve as the foundation for full automation for most Standard accounts. Pilot programs are under way now that will lead to those solutions.
While we continue to innovate in the areas of underwriting and service, Claims and Risk Management are not left out. No posting today would be complete without some mention of AI. In addition to the AI technology that will be embedded in our automation efforts, we are developing AI-based tools that will further enhance our industry-leading claims handling. These tools will also allow us to use the information produced to develop new risk management data for focused communication to our customers.
The evolution of the markets we serve isn’t slowing. As your Carrier of Choice, we must change along with our customers, continually improve our service quality, and increase the speed of delivery even as we maintain the core of what has made ProAssurance a leader.
Conclusion
Every MPL market cycle is unique. We should not believe that history will repeat itself. The current market cycle is neither hard nor soft. While there is ample competition in the broader MPL space, there are pockets and classes that are firm to hardening.
We believe agents and brokers specializing in medical liability value the breadth of our appetite and product offering across nearly all sectors of healthcare. Our new business submission pipeline has been robust, and, from this vantage point, we clearly see that our competition is experiencing severity trends in both expected and unexpected venues.
MPL Claims Challenges and Achievements
ProAssurance’s MPL division experienced opportunities and challenges in 2024, which are projected to continue into 2025. The market was subjected to economic and social inflation as well as highly publicized, aberrant verdicts. The retirement of seasoned trial attorneys, often replaced by less experienced counsel, left its mark on defense firms.
The growth of private equity and consolidation in nearly every sector of healthcare also casts uncertainty over the future of care and physician autonomy. Adding to these challenges is the prevalence of cyberattacks, with their potential impact on the timeliness and quality of care and on increasing exposure to claims.
In 2024, Claims achieved noteworthy accomplishments, which included:
- ProAssurance and NORCAL legacy file integration into the Claims Workspace (CWS) platform.
- Claim management resulting in trial and appellate victories, paid indemnity and allocated loss adjustment expenses (ALAE) management, and use of high-low agreements and Find Liability Early (FLE) cases.
- Uniform tracking of NORCAL and ProAssurance claim statistics and improvement of performance monitoring.
- Datalytics implementation enabling identification of effective and efficient defense counsel.
- Implementation of defense counsel regional meetings.
- Education and training of claims staff on policy language, which enhanced the team member knowledge base.
- Implementation of National and Regional Claim Review Committees (CRC) to identify defensible medicine.
- Training programs focused on improving team member skills and knowledge.
- Preferred vendor agreements assisting in managing ALAE.
- Collaboration and communication with Underwriting, Business Development, Risk Management, and BOLT, and bolstered efforts toward Carrier of Choice and Employer of Choice goals.
- Service recognitions.
- Participation in regional and national preferred agent and broker meetings.
A Year of Progress for Business Development
As Business Development continues progress on making ProAssurance your clear Carrier of Choice, the need to achieve adequate premium rates has also been critical. The balance of being a Carrier of Choice and navigating the current claims environment has been challenging, and our Elite and Legacy Partners have been key to helping us achieve that balance. As relayed in the third-quarter earnings report, ProAssurance MPL achieved premium increases of 13%. Elite and Legacy Partners’ skill and expertise presenting the realities of the current environment alongside the value of being a ProAssurance insured significantly contributed to that success.
While working with our partners to help them deliver that difficult message, we have also continued our progress on initiatives to improve the ease of doing business with us. Based largely on feedback from our Advisory Councils, we focused on three projects in 2024 to improve responsiveness, consistency, and your customer experience.
Reflecting on 2024 Projects
With the publication of ProAssurance’s service standards in 2023, we wanted to be transparent about what our partners can expect from us. Building on that foundation, we are introducing our Global Service Agreement, a document that further expands on our service standards, providing you with a clear explanation of the best way to conduct business with ProAssurance. This will create a more efficient and speedy process.
Our Submission Consistency project will produce clear and specific guidelines on necessary information and how that information should be formatted to produce efficient turnaround on your submissions. This information will be unique to each underwriting unit.
The Healthcare Team Educational Tools is the foundation for a broader program that will provide you with resources to help educate new members to your team or existing members who need a refresher. This program will be rapidly expanded until you can depend on it to help you get your healthcare team members up to speed.
ProAssurance Automation
Automation will allow us to be more efficient and free up resources to focus on opportunities that require more effort and creativity. At the time of this publication, we will be launching our first automated quote-to-bind system. There will be two classes of businesses written through it initially: general dentistry and the MDVIP (concierge medicine program). As we move into 2025 and beyond, we will be adding products and classes of business to this system until the majority of policies can be written automatically, freeing your team’s time and resources.
We are excited for what the future holds at ProAssurance, and as we work to become a Carrier of Choice, we look forward to our deepening partnership with you. The Business Development team wishes you a happy holiday and a wonderful New Year!
Risk Management: Team Developments and Achievements
Risk Management has been busy in 2024 following some major staff changes, including retirements at the beginning of the year. Mallory Earley was promoted to Director of Risk Management, leading ProAssurance’s five regional Risk Management teams, as well as the ACCME program. Bradley Byrne accepted the Southeast Regional Manager position, and Wendy Alderman made the move to her home state of Florida to serve the Southeast region as Senior Risk Management Consultant.
There were additional RM promotions, including:
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Barbara Hunyady – Midwest Regional Manager
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Barb Linder – Midwest Senior Risk Management Consultant
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Gerryann Whalen – Northeast Senior Risk Management Consultant
The Risk team developed several new offerings this year and continued as always to provide valuable educational tools and training for both our insureds and agency partners.
Top Achievements
Launch of ABSA
The Annual Baseline Self-Assessment (ABSA) was launched in January, serving as an alternate option for potential policy discounts. Although educational offerings such as the Loss Prevention Seminar (LPS) are still available currently, the long-term vision is for the ABSA to be the sole means to obtain a policy discount in the years to come. The tool will be a yearly touchpoint to identify and improve areas of potential risk within medical practices and protocols. Healthcare teams including physicians and even agency partners and underwriters can initiate the request to complete the ABSA.
This launch solidified our commitment to helping insureds while collecting data to better identify gaps and manage risk, providing additional educational opportunities tailored to each practice’s unique needs. Establishing process workflows and incorporating specialty-specific questions ensure an efficient and applicable assessment for a wide range of policyholders.
Risk Management has received over 3,000 individual responses to date in 2024 and is using that initial data to plan and implement actionable items to proactively assist insureds.
Website: Accessibility and Content
One of the best improvements in 2024 for Risk Management was the revamp of the website, RiskManagement.ProAssurance.com. This renovation was put in place to improve accessibility to content. The new format and accompanying ease of use allow customers, policyholders, and agency partners to better access risk management resources and identify applicable, helpful materials with just the click of a button.
The site also has improved efficiencies, displaying bundled materials to help users find related content on specific topics. New releases of Malpractice Case Studies, online seminars, “2 Minutes: What’s the Risk” videos, Claims Rx issues, and other materials are regularly added to expand risk management offerings to include emerging risks.
One additional educational service that is new in 2024 is the Risk Management podcast, Rapid Risk Review (RRR), which fulfills the need for quick and easy education provided in a popular format. This inaugural podcast currently has six episodes and can be accessed here. This resource will continue to grow and develop as we move into 2025, covering hot topics with both Risk Management staff and featured guests.
Measurable Customer Service
This year Risk Management made measurable customer service a top priority. Using the Risk Management Helpline and general email inbox, the team collected insightful data on the type of inquiries received as well as the speed at which the team helps customers. With nearly all calls and emails answered within 24 hours, the Helpline is prominently featured on the new website to remind agents and customers alike that the Risk team is available Monday-Friday 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. local time to answer their questions via phone or email.
These highlighted achievements solidify our commitment to better serving our agency partners and insureds by evaluating our educational offerings, improving access to our resources, and creating new ways to assist our customers. Utilizing our staff’s unique backgrounds and talents ensures future success, and we look forward to serving our customers in 2025.
Wrapped Up: 2024 Marketing and Communications
As a support department for our front office departments and you, our distribution partners, I am aware that Marketing and Communications is a cost center, and therefore we must push ourselves to show value. Looking back on 2024, we demonstrated that value by meeting our operational commitments and delivering signature projects that we can expand on in 2025 and beyond.
What Are Marketing’s Regular Operation Commitments?
You are reading the last of 12 monthly issues of ProVisions produced in 2024. This is at least the tenth consecutive year of delivering our monthly magazine for our agency partners with no skips and no late releases. On one hand, it can seem trivial to take a victory lap for simply meeting 12 deadlines. On the other hand, we work with dozens of associations and other organizations that miss their marks as a matter of routine.
This publication is part of the ProAssurance value proposition. We want our trading partners to be equipped with both industry and Company insights that are gained through the confidence of prospective clients at the point of sale. It is our understanding that no other MPL carrier produces a piece similar to ProVisions. We hope you find value in it, and we are always open to your advice or ideas about themes of interest in future issues.
What Was New in 2024?
This year concluded a multiyear innovation of our public websites, which began in 2023 with the deployment of Agents.ProAssurance.com. The overall project objective was to focus our root domain, ProAssurance.com, on the medical malpractice line of business rather than on ProAssurance Group, a family of specialty liability insurance companies and branded programs. The group site, ProAssuranceGroup.com, was launched in 2023 enabling ProAssurance.com to focus on medical malpractice insurance. This project was completed in August 2024: It included a site redesign, a new streamlined information architecture, and a switch to a new underlying technology that produces better analytics. Along the way the Digital team also delivered a site dedicated to Risk Management: RiskManagement.ProAssurance.com. The Digital team launched all our public-facing program sites such as those for Certitude and the Ob-Gyn Risk Alliance programs on the new technology platforms.
With the platform work done, we are now shifting to a long list of content and feature enhancements geared toward delivering more value with less friction to you and your clients. We will keep you updated here in ProVisions throughout 2025 with news of new features and content.
We also included a continuation of the successful customer appreciation and retention campaign featuring Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Laws of Medicine in 2024. While our Risk Management Data Analytics team is constantly reminding us that “correlation is not causation,” we find that customers who respond to our book offer renew at higher rates than those who do not. Along with data that supports a positive relationship between the retention campaign and renewal rates, we found that the campaign is popular among our insureds. We will not be able to calculate the retention lift until 2024 is over, but this year’s response rate will exceed 20%. Because claims severity is the dominant trend, our 2025 campaign offer will be When Good Doctors Get Sued by Angela M. Dodge, PhD, with Steven F. Fitzer, JD. We will tell you all about it in the January 2025 ProVisions.
Marketing is closely aligned with our Risk Management department, working hand-in-hand to produce and distribute thought-leading content and differentiated services. Support for the Annual Baseline Self-Assessment (ABSA) rollout was a major area of focus in Marketing and Communications. As the ABSA will eventually become more prevalent than CME-bearing education as the way customers earn the Risk Management discount, this will remain an area of focus for the Communications team in 2025. In addition to explaining the change to insureds and agency partners, we are pushing to use the data to tell Risk Management’s story and demonstrate value to our insureds.
At Their Core, Who Is Marketing?
From designing awards to proofing PowerPoint slide decks, many of the projects Marketing touches are in support of the accomplishments others will report to you in this issue of ProVisions. If we helped the Company look good out in the field and moved us closer to being your Carrier of Choice, then we are accomplishing our mission. If there is anything we can do better though, we’ve got room on our New Year’s Resolution list, so please let us know! Thanks for a terrific 2024. Happy holidays and see you in 2025!
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Celebrating One of the Unsung Heroes of Healthcare: You
I'm binge-watching Everwood, one of my favorite all-time TV series, for the second time. In one episode, Dr. Abbott, a small-town doctor, faces a crisis when his malpractice insurance gets suspended after it's revealed that his sister, also a doctor in the practice, is HIV-positive. Dr. Abbott's response? "You're suspending my insurance? I won't be able to practice."
Now, you probably don't quote early-2000s television shows during client meetings, but even avid TV watchers know that practicing medicine is risky without MPL coverage—the right MPL coverage. And that's where you come in—the professional who has those tricky and sometimes awkward conversations with HCPs to provide your clients with the one thing they would rather not think about but undeniably need.
Selling Malpractice Insurance: Like Selling A Spare Tire?
Let's face it—MPL insurance isn't exactly a conversation starter for most people. Just its mention can wipe the smile from a healthcare provider's face. It's an essential, like a spare tire, that people don't think about until they need it. And when they do, they really need it (and wish they checked the air in the spare!).
Yet you do the job, engaging with physicians and medical facilities all year to serve them even when they resist. And while they may not thank you for it now, they could find themself extremely grateful later—when it really counts.
It's a Thankless Job. Until It Isn't
Medical practices aren't high-fiving MPL agents when they walk in. You're just another interruption to their busy day (unless they called you). But you show up, not just because it's your job, but because it's best for your prospects and clients, even if they don't realize it—yet.
Though I sold medical devices, the situation is all too familiar to anyone who sells something essential but easy to dismiss. I once spent years trying to connect with Dr. D., a surgeon who barely acknowledged my existence. Then, one day, as he performed a total hip replacement, he fractured the upper part of a young patient's femur into several pieces. I was working with another surgeon in an adjacent OR. The nurse from Dr. D.'s room rushed in, asking if they had a wire set to hold the fracture together. Guess who had the perfect product in his car? In fact, the exact one Dr. D. had previously dismissed as "overkill."
I said, "Tell Dr. D. I can help him if he’ll let me."
A minute later, Dr. D. welcomed me into his OR like we were old friends. I walked him through applying a specialized plate designed for this complication. It salvaged the joint replacement (and probably saved the doctor from needing to call his MPL agent!). Did he warm up to me after that? Not really. But it gave me a great story and a mission mindset to help other surgeons be prepared for worst-case scenarios. You can only help those who let you, but you don't give up when the stakes are high.
Raise a Glass – You've Earned It
Getting HCPs to discuss an essential topic they'd rather ignore is challenging. Yet you do that day in and day out, and even hearing the often repeated phrase "I'm happy with my current provider" doesn't deter you.
Congratulations on completing another successful year, and thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you here in ProVisions. I hope you'll make time during the holidays to recharge and celebrate with family and friends—you've earned it! And get ready to make your impact again in 2025.
Cheers!
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Written by Mace Horoff of Medical Sales Performance. Mace Horoff is a representative of Sales Pilot. He helps sales teams and individual representatives who sell medical devices, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, healthcare services, and other healthcare-related products to sell more and earn more by employing a specialized healthcare system. Have a topic you’d like to see covered? Email your suggestions to AskMarketing@ProAssurance.com. |
