Loss History Reports Now Sent Directly to Third Parties

Has this happened to you?

The state licensing board or local hospital asks to verify your physician credentials. A written request for your professional liability loss experience – also known as a “loss history” – is sent to ISMIE Mutual. The report is mailed to your office and you tuck it away in your files. A few weeks later the third party contacts you: They didn’t receive your loss history. That’s when you discover that you were supposed to send them a copy of the report.

When this two-step notification process began in 1992 there was concern that releasing claims data to anyone except the policyholder could violate
your right to privacy. From that point on we mailed you the loss history with the understanding that you would forward copies to any third party that requested the information.

Now that’s about to change. Effective immediately, ISMIE will also send a loss history report to requesting parties at the same time we send the information to you.

You will no longer be responsible for sending loss histories to hospitals, surgicenters, state licensing and disciplinary boards or insurance companies. An authorized request to ISMIE will take care of that for you.

With the implementation of HIPAA, there is far less concern that distributing your loss history to third parties will infringe upon the confidentiality of your claims information. The new HIPAA rules ensure that the authorization you sign is sufficient to justify the release of your loss history directly to the requesting party.

“Sending concurrent loss histories to policyholders and third parties provides another level of physician-first service to our policyholders,” said ISMIE Mutual Chairman Harold L. Jensen, M.D.