NHS Trusts: Insurance

(asked on 26th January 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what (a) actuarial analysis and (b) financial modelling was carried out before a decision was taken on self-insuring by NHS trusts.


Answered by
Dan Poulter Portrait
Dan Poulter
This question was answered on 2nd February 2015

NHS trusts were no longer permitted to buy commercial insurance relating to employers’ and public liability, buildings and contents, and other miscellaneous risks (with a limited number of exemptions) from the introduction of the NHS Litigation Authority’s Liabilities to Third Parties and Property Expenses Schemes on 1 April 1999.

This followed extensive research into the scale, cost and financial benefits of NHS dependency on commercial insurance, which lead the Department to decide that better value for money across the National Health Service as a whole would be achieved if NHS trusts no longer insured commercially, but instead self-insured, through these risk pooling schemes, against non-clinical risks. Trusts themselves have since maintained a general prohibition on entering into insurance arrangements with commercial insurers in their individual standing financial instructions.

In terms of guidance, the Department publishes Health Building Notes which do not deal specifically with the specific kinds of incidents to which the question refers, but do emphasise that NHS estate has to be properly managed to comply with statute, the NHS Constitution, regulatory requirements, and good property management principles. If this is adhered to then the risk of damage to a NHS building should be greatly reduced.

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