Membership Advantages

There are a number of advantages that make the Central Pennsylvania Physicians the optimum choice for your medical malpractice insurance, including:

  1. Effective Risk Management – Data and literature reveal that customized physician risk management techniques can enable Central Pennsylvania Physicians to reduce both the frequency and the severity of professional liability claims at the same time enabling physicians to enhance their practice. This, in part, may account for the success of the program. Through rigorous underwriting, education, training, event management, and the support of Stevens & Lee’s risk management professionals, health care professionals can work towards achieving significant liability risk reduction both as to frequency and severity. Incentives between insurers and insureds are uniquely aligned. Severity is uniquely controlled.
  2. Lower Insurance Costs – In July of 2003 Central Pennsylvania Physicians was, on average, 39% less expensive than other carriers. Today, the gap has widened. On average Central Pennsylvania Physicians is 65% below what other carriers offer. Ask any insured in this program. Better coverage, better service, at a better rate.
  3. Stable, Reliable Coverage - Physicians in Central Pennsylvania were faced with another crisis. Few carriers remained, and the carriers that stayed restricted access to coverage and instituted double-digit rate increases. A sense of instability was pervasive as physicians were left dangling, one phone call away from not having any coverage at all. Locally, experts in health care law and insurance conducted an exhaustive analysis of the issue. Central Pennsylvania Physicians was developed at the conclusion of this process creating a stable insurance program that will protect physicians throughout their careers, and generations of physicians in the future! A conservative analysis of the potential risk, strong capitalization, strict underwriting thresholds, integration of a premier risk management strategy and limitation of the program to physicians in the preferred Central Pennsylvania Physicians region, Central Pennsylvania Physicians has emerged as THE insurance program that is Here Today. Here to Stay!
  4. Physician Ownership - Physician ownership is a core philosophy of Central Pennsylvania Physicians and an integral protection from the insurance carrier’s sins of the past that helped create the current crisis. Physician ownership ensures an immediate alignment of incentives when making strategic and financial decisions! Central Pennsylvania Physicians:
    • Elect the Board of Directors
    • Control amendments to the bylaws
    • Realize profit (in the form of any dividends paid)
    • Participate in the day to day operations of essential committees.
    While the participation of members varies significantly, you are assured that your interests are being represented by your peers at every level of the organization.

  5. Geographic Risk Advantage – It isn’t a difference a few percent - it is the difference of hundreds of percent. We believe that if you are sharing risk with riskier counties, your insurance will cost more. That is why Central Pennsylvania Physicians is restricted to a preferred environment in Central Pennsylvania Physicians. Sharing risk in a similar geography, with similar practice standards, with physicians COMMITTED to risk management is a major factor in controlling the cost of your insurance.
  6. Enhancing Your Practice – Traditionally, professional liability insurers have provided risk management programs to their insureds as an optional service. Central Pennsylvania Physicians risk management program, in contrast, is mandatory, and yet, accepted by its physicians. This acceptance is because members understand the dual incentives of our loss control program: Enhancing one’s practice and enhancing the risk pool, which ultimately strengthens their bottom line. The combination is powerful. Decades of experience and literature support our loss control program.
  7. Service You Deserve – IMMEDIATELY…and when it matters most! Assistance with controlling your risk starts the minute you join Central Pennsylvania Physicians, and when it matters most you have immediate access to professional claims administrators and legal counsel. From the day you are introduced to the program, through your risk management audit, educational programs, management of events when they do occur and every day between and thereafter, you have the full support of seasoned experts in health care risk management and law.
  8. Flexibility - Enabling You to Grow – A disturbing trend recently identified deals with restrictions for physicians to engage in emerging technologies. In today’s evolving scientific world, you need to be able to embrace rapidly emerging technologies without barriers and restrictions from your insurance carrier. As a physician owned company, Central Pennsylvania Physicians understands this issue. As technology develops Central Pennsylvania Physicians is continuously evaluating the risks this may present to you, and creating solutions that enable you to remain on the cutting edge of medical technology.
  9. Aggressive Defense – Many factors have enabled Central Pennsylvania Physicians to be uniquely positioned as your best line of defense. The program’s integration of Risk Mitigation, Event Management, and Risk Litigation is a role model for best practices in managing professional liability claims. Employing cutting edge strategies in controlling and managing litigation, the attorneys at Stevens & Lee aggressively defend the interests of Central Pennsylvania Physician insureds. This isn’t reactive participation in a suit. This is aggressive, proactive, cutting edge defense by attorneys experienced in representing physicians in professional liability claims in state and federal courts. Stevens & Lee has invested in resources to technology in the courtroom, a national network of experts, jury consultants, mock juries and more to ensure you receive the best defense possible.