“Ask eQuoteMD, with Tim Ryan.” A medical malpractice insurance video blog question and answer session to help physicians have a better understanding of their coverage options. eQuoteMD provides quality solutions for medical malpractice insurance to doctors, surgeons, clinics, hospitals and facilities across the United States.
Video Transcript –
Tim Ryan: Hello and welcome to eQuoteMD’s medical malpractice insurance video blog. I’m Tim Ryan and I’m here to answer your medical malpractice insurance questions.
Recently, I was asked to explain what exactly a B.O.R. is. Now a B.O.R. stands for broker of record. It can also be referred to as an A.O.R or an agent of record. B.O.R.’s are used for a couple of different things in the medical malpractice insurance market and a doctor should know a couple of different things about it before he/she signs. So I would like to discuss those with you today.
Now, let’s start with the reasons why a B.O.R. is used first. A B.O.R. is used for an existing policy or a policy that is being applied for by a doctor. Essentially what a B.O.R. does is it replaces an old broker or agent with a new broker or agent to service a doctor’s medical malpractice insurance policy. For the case of an existing policy, the doctor who has a medical malpractice insurance policy, may or may not decide at some point during the life of that policy that a new broker or agent will be able to service his needs better than an old broker or agent. In this case, the doctor has the right to sign what is called the B.O.R. and replace the old broker or agent with the new broker or agent who will do a better a job at shopping the market and keeping the doctor up to date with current medical malpractice insurance information so that the doctor can make the best decisions for his/her practice.
The second way that a B.O.R. is used is for a policy that is going through the underwriting process. A medical malpractice insurance policy that’s being applied for. Now, in this case, if a specific broker sends in an application for a doctor and then the doctor decides that a new broker would do a better job with that policy as it goes through the underwriting process, he/she can again sign the B.O.R., remove the old broker from the policy and add the new broker so that the new broker can take the doctors policy through the underwriting process and into fruition as a full-fledged policy.
Now, when a doctor signs a B.O.R. there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, that any B.O.R. is going to have a 5 to 10 day waiting period where the insurance company is notified of the B.O.R. and then the insurance company notifies the old broker or agent of the B.O.R. That old broker or agent then has, like I said, that 5-10 day period to talk to the doctor to make sure that this is exactly what the doctor wants to do. If the doctor decides to change his/her mind, he/she can resend that B.O.R. policy and keep the old broker. If the doctor has made the right decision and wants to keep the new broker he/she can just leave things as they are and after that 5-10 day waiting period the new broker will be in charge of that policy.
Secondly, before a doctor signs anything like a B.O.R. he/she needs to understand that this will effectively remove the old broker from the policy. If the doctor still has a good relationship with that old broker, and wants to keep that old broker as the person taking care of his/her policy, he/she should not sign the B.O.R.
Another thing to keep in mind with B.O.R.’s is the fact that the B.O.R. only applies to the specific medical malpractice insurance company that you either are applying for coverage from or currently have a policy with. This does not in any way affect any other companies in the medical malpractice insurance market that you have not applied for or any other companies, maybe in other states, where you currently have a medical malpractice insurance policy.
Again, I’m Tim Ryan here to answer your medical malpractice insurance questions. Please feel free to leave a question in the comments section below. Love to help you out in any way that I can. Have a great day!
If you would like to have one of your questions answered by Tim Ryan, please follow @eQuoteMD on Twitter and send us a “tweet” with your question. You can follow Tim Ryan on Twitter as well @TheMedMalMan.
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