Deadly Exposures
(Page 3 of 4)
Vickie left the meeting bordering on a state of shock. Her head was spinning. In her gut she felt that Dr. Grave’s ill-timed outburst meant that her E&O limits were now in jeopardy.
When she got back to her office, she was barely settled in her chair when her phone rang. It was the head of her healthcare brokerage team.
“Vickie I got some bad news for you,” the broker said.
“What?” Vickie said, her normally genteel veneer already worn a little thin.
“Your business interruption claim and your environmental cleanup costs on that MRSA outbreak aren’t covered.”
“What do you mean?”
“MRSA’s considered an environmental pollutant under the general liability and property policy language, as first party business interruption wouldn’t normally be covered under a general liability policy. I don’t think there is any way we can get out of this,” the broker said.
“I had no idea,” Vickie said.
“Neither did I, sorry but I didn’t,” the broker said.
There was a pause as the veteran risk management partners digested this harsh reality.
“Vickie, it’s not like you’ve had a lot of losses, we’ve been doing a good job,” the broker said.
Vickie didn’t say anything and there was a long pause.
“Here’s what you’re looking at in terms of an uncovered loss,” the broker said.
The broker had a job to do, but as he went on, the loss numbers he was reciting fell on Vickie as if she had a tin ear.
After Vickie hung up, she felt emotion choking her air passage and decided to run to the bathroom to splash some water on her face.
“Am I a fraud or am I just stupid?” she asked herself internally as she stared at herself in the mirror of the second-floor women’s restroom in the hospital’s administration building after washing her face.
The details of the botched coverage kept running through her mind like a song she couldn’t get out of her head.
“How in God’s name could I have known that?” Vickie said, out loud this time.
“Huh?” someone said from behind a bathroom stall door.
“Nothing,” Vickie said. “Sorry.”
Vickie had always played fair and by the rules.
So how was she now staring at a $2.3 million uncovered loss?
Disclaimer: The events depicted in this scenario are fictitious. Any similarity to any corporation or person, living or dead, is merely coincidental.
Poll Question
Loading ...(The Analysis is presented on page 4)
All healthcare facilities, regardless of size, face an entirely new world of risk today. Beyond traditional environmental risks, healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are at the forefront of emerging issues. More than ever, the need for a comprehensive risk management program is essential to effectively managing environmental risks and protecting the financial stability of the organization.
