You specialize in making people beautiful by giving them a chance to attain that healthy and perfect smile that everyone dream of. You just don't know how to simply transform one's ugly set of teeth into something more appealing, but you are really great at it. However, no matter how great and skill you are in what you are doing, sometimes you just can't avoid accidents from happening.

Dental Treatments Loupe

Committing mistakes like performing wrong treatment method and misdiagnosis because of the unavailability of precision instruments like dental loupes and dental headlight can make you at risk of being legally charged for malpractice. To protect yourself from such misfortune and the problems associated with it, it is critical for you to get a malpractice insurance.

What does dental malpractice insurance mean?

A dental malpractice insurance is a sort of professional liability insurance that protects dental professionals like dentists and hygienists against patients who sue or legally charge them of malpractice for the claim that the patients were hurt or harmed because of the dentist's negligence or because of the decision of the dentist to intentionally carry out a harmful treatment procedure.

This type of insurance coverage does not cover, in any way, criminal or intentional acts, sexual misconduct, and punitive damages, among others.

Different dental malpractice insurance coverage

There is two basic coverage for dental malpractice insurance. These are the occurrence malpractice coverage and the claims-made malpractice coverage. 

Claims-made policy 

This kind of policy can provide you protection against any covered incident when both the resulting claim and the incident happen and was reported while the claims-made policy is or was in force. This means that it will only take effect when you file for the claim and when the incident happen while you are still insured.

If the incident happens while you are still insured but you filed the claim after you have already dropped your claims-made policy, you will not be covered by the insurance unless you pay for the extended reporting endorsement known as tail coverage. Most often, tail coverage costs as much as three times more expensive than the annual premium.

For most dental professionals, this is the better insurance option for them simply because it is relatively more affordable as compared to the occurrence policy with similar policy limits.

Occurrence policy

The occurrence policy provides lifetime protection for any covered incident that happens within the policy period, no matter when the claim is filed or made. If for instance your occurrence policy is valid for the calendar year 2015 and the incident happened within that year, you can still be able to file a claim today or in the future for such incident that took place last 2015 even though you already have dropped your occurrence policy with that particular carrier.

This type of dental malpractice insurance policy is ideal for those dentists who need and want flexibility. The occurrence policy is a bit more expensive than the claims-made policy. The good thing about it is that you no longer have to pay for the tail coverage whenever you need to file a claim for the incident that occurred while the policy is still in effect.