Hospital and health facility liability insurance
Mandatory insurance covering the liability of a hospital, clinic or hospital group toward patients, written on a claims-made basis, where the serial loss definition decides how much stays with the group.
Health facility liability insurance covers a hospital's or clinic's liability toward the patients it treats. In France the obligation comes from Article L. 1142-2 of the Public Health Code, from the law of March 4, 2002. Public hospitals with sufficient resources may opt out: AP-HP, the Paris hospital system, self-insures. The policy must be written on a claims-made basis, with an extended reporting period of at least five years. It covers treatment errors, strict liability for hospital-acquired infections below 25% impairment, organizational failures and health products supplied. The French market is thin, and public hospitals buy through public tenders. For a group of several facilities, the issue that drives the premium is aggregation. Article L. 251-2 of the Insurance Code defines a loss as all damage arising from events with the same technical cause. Every claim born of a single defect therefore forms one loss, attached to the year of the first claim. A single per-loss limit applies, and a single deductible. The underwriter then looks at what the group has centralized: shared prescribing software, a central sterilization unit, the same endoscope model across several sites. Each one is a serial loss point. Conversely, separate policies per site multiply the limits, but also the deductibles. Cyber and medical liability overlap when ransomware delays care, and each policy's exclusions decide who pays.
Textbook case: a group of five clinics buys a single program, limited to 10 million euros per loss and 20 million per year. An endoscope washer-disinfector, the same model at three sites, is misconfigured during a shared update. Over eight months, 40 patients are infected; claims reach 14 million euros. The insurer finds a single technical cause: one loss, one 10 million limit, one deductible. The group keeps 4 million. It argues three separate configurations, hence three losses; the expert report will decide.
hospital professional liability, HPL insurance, health facility liability, hospital malpractice insurance
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