Dear Colleagues:
The Harvard Medical School teaching community brings together some of the best and brightest minds in medicine. As Brigham and Women's physicians and founding members of Partners HealthCare, we are supported with tremendous resources and programs aimed at empowering us to deliver the best patient care.
Being part of this community affords us many benefits, and our superior medical malpractice insurance from CRICO/RMF is one of them. For the most part, CRICO/RMF provides us twice the medical malpractice insurance coverage for half the cost of other insurers and, when necessary, a legal defense that is second to none. More importantly, CRICO/RMF shares our dedication to improving patient safety.
BWH specialists pay less in annual premiums than clinicians covered by other area malpractice insurers. Some of our physicians are able to take advantage of discounts on premiums for discipline-specific training sessions for various specialists, such as anesthesiologists and obstetricians.
CRICO/RMF works hand in hand with many of our colleagues throughout BWH and our sibling institutions within Partners and the HMS community to help clinicians improve practice and performance. Founded by the HMS hospital community in 1976, CRICO/RMF truly shares our system-wide commitment to advancing care with a specific focus on patient safety.
Our insurer engages many clinicians throughout our system in programs and initiatives to help us improve our processes and standards around care. CRICO/RMF supports medical simulation programs at STRATUS and other facilities that reinforce crisis management, technical skills and communication. In addition, CRICO/RMF is a strong advocate for obstetrics team training, another program that reinforces communications and technical skills. All of these programs are aimed at increasing patient safety.
Also, CRICO/RMF invests in improving safety through an annual grant program which supports research by physicians including our colleagues Christopher Roy, MD, Eric Poon, MD, Jeffrey Rothschild, MD, Tejal Gandhi, MD, Allen Kachalia, MD, and Jeffrey Schnipper, MD. Through this novel grant program, CRICO/RMF supports our front-line staff in research that examines processes and systems to improve patient outcomes.
As our insurer, CRICO/RMF manages its responsibility of protecting our institutions and clinicians while keeping our premiums below market rates and promoting patient safety. It truly is a win-win formula.