Veterinary hospitals face risks that can impact the bottom line and reputation with consumers
Veterinary hospitals need specific protections that many other businesses may not require. In addition to the risk of natural disasters, litigation, or worker injury that most companies face, veterinarians must also be ready to handle unfortunate situations like the death of a pet, injury or disappearance.
While specific coverages can help your business overcome specific problems, they also need general insurance to cover damage to buildings and equipment, injuries and allegations of wrongdoing.
Business-Owner Policy (BOP) / Package Policy
A business-owner policy ("BOP") is designed mainly for small business owners. It combines many necessary coverages such as general liability, property, business interruption and many more. As a relatively general-purpose policy for most business owners, a BOP is an excellent foundation. A package policy is similar, but designed for middle market sized business (>$25M in revenue) or those in south-eastern coastal locations.
Worker's Compensation
Working with animals can sometimes be unpredictable. Worker's compensation insurance protects your business if an employee is injured at your practice during work or even while running errands for the business. Coverage can also protect if an employee becomes sick, disabled or loses wages because of working at your facility. Most state governments require you to carry workers compensation once you have employees.
Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI)
A large part of your business is managing personnel. Occasionally, challenges may arise that require you to protect yourself from legal action related to a current or ex-employee. As society becomes more entitled, business owners are increasingly exposed to costly, yet meritless, litigation. EPLI is essential for any business owner with employees.
Cyber Liability & Data Breach
Cyber Liability is a specialized policy designed to protect businesses from the financial impact of cyber-attacks, data breaches, and other technology-related risks. As AI becomes more advanced and cyber threats like ransomware and data breaches become more frequent for organizations of all sizes, protections has never been more essential. Cyber liability insurance covers both direct costs and legal liabilities that general liability insurance typically exclude.
Builder's Risk & Construction Liability
Are you planning to build-out a new leasehold space, remodel an existing building or even build one from the ground up? Builder's Risk, also known as "Course of Construction Insurance," protects your assets while under construction. Most BOPs and package policies do not contemplate active construction operations, which requires specialized coverage.
Veterinary Professional Liability & License Defense
Even though veterinarians do everything they can to provide the highest standard of care, unfortunate circumstances can still happen outside of anyone's control. Pet owners may blame a veterinarian for their pet's failing health, even when the veterinarian is innocent. For this reason, we recommend veterinary professional liability and license defense to help protect you and your business.
Commercial Auto
Whether you are providing off-site services or running errands, commercial auto policies can not only protect owned autos of the business, but it can also protect your business in other situations. Sometimes, employees will use their own vehicle to run a business errand which results in an auto accident. Having strong coverage can prevent a catastrophic financial hardship.
Mobile Property (Inland Marine)
Specialized property coverage is needed when your property is mobile or off-premises for a significant amount of time. Whether you are 100% mobile or you have a brick-and-mortar hospital offering at home services, inland marine coverage can help cover losses to medical equipment damaged or destroyed in transit or at an off-site location, which is excluded by most business-owner policies.
Bonds
If you offer a 401(k), pension or health plan, an ERISA bond (or fidelity bond) is required by law and is a type of insurance that protects the plan against losses caused by acts of fraud or dishonesty, such as larceny, theft, embezzlement, forgery, misappropriation, wrongful abstraction, wrongful conversion, willful misapplication, and other acts.
Umbrella
An umbrella policy can increase the available limits of liability of your Business-Owner Policy, Commercial Auto, and Employers Liability policies to protect your business if a liability claim exceeds the underlying policy limits. For example, an employee causes an auto accident while running an errand in their vehicle for your business that resulted in a $5.5 million problem. Because the errand was being conducted for your business, you could be financially responsible.
Learn more about the benefits of business insurance through Vetinsure
To find out more information about beneficial coverages that you should consider for your veterinary business’s protection, contact Vetinsure. We are a vet-centric independent insurance agency that strives to help veterinary practices save money while still ensuring the practice has all of the coverage it needs. Vetinsure serves the veterinary industry exclusively.
Call us at 800-272-1249 to discover if your veterinary practice has all of the insurance coverages that it needs.