This is the placing you first podcast. I'm Dan Wenson . This podcast features news and insights from CRCs vast knowledge base of 600 plus producers who write in excess of $8 billion in premium annually and we're giving you insider access to what's happening in our company in the current trends in the types of insurance we play this edition of the podcast.
Remember on liability policies, there has to be the ability to prove there was negligence and bodily harm. Let's say that there is someone in a facility who becomes infected with the coronavirus and the question to ask is what's the outcome of that particular situation? How did the facility handle it? Did they follow the proper guidelines?
This is the placing you first bug cast . Okay, so Corona virus is in the news and of course there are definitely some implications for insurance, particularly when it comes to a senior living centers. Join now to discuss more about this. I've got some senior brokers from CRC, Jason Lewis in the Denver office. Good afternoon, Jason. Great
rusty Hughes and true Taylor are from the CRC Birmingham office. How are you guys doing today?
Thanks for having us looking forward to it.
Okay. So Corona virus , it's a big question that's out there. Is that how severe this thing is going to be and what the actual mortality rates are? Some people are saying that there is high as 15% for older patients. Uh , what risks for senior living facilities are out there as it relates to this specific virus? Coronavirus
so I think there's a number of, you know, riff , you know, for any compromised population would certainly in a nursing home. Uh , but for the most part you're dealing with senior citizens that generally speaking have other underlying health issues that can be certainly respiratory in nature, you know , uh , related to cardiac health, any number of things. Their noon systems are compromised.
They certainly are weaker and obviously being in close proximity to each other, there's a multitude of opportunities for transmission. That's why, you know, in a nursing home setting, just like in a cruise ship setting where you are kind of isolated and in close quarters you're going to see the transmission of any virus , um , move pretty quickly.
You know, and then you add in the factor that you've got staff members that will outnumber the number of residents and a lot of those staff members and they may have family members that uh, that have been traveling or they, it gives them an opportunity to be, you know, potentially infected by either family members or it creates a number of different challenges, not only for administrators and the operators, but also obviously the residents. Definitely.
I would add to that by, I think the visitor , um, issues is a big issue in the senior living side . And because you have a subset of the population sitting in these facilities that are in mobile, they're stationary. A lot of times they're all breathing the same way or the other one's breathing. And you have these visitors coming and going and there's really not a , uh , a way to where they
been or are or who they'd been around that, that they had been traveling, like Jason said. But the other issue I think is that senior living facilities need to be aware of is, you know, what is the liability as it relates to their employees, the employees of the senior living facility. You know, if the senior living facility is not taking the proper measures to test for the virus or to ask the proper questions, how are their employees?
A lot of a lot of discussion now has turned to how are their employees affected , uh, from , uh , from possibly a , uh , or comp perspective. So that's one of the other things that conversations turned a little bit into that over the last few days. Well, I would just add real quick. And then finally, obviously if something does happen, you've got the reputational damage that you've got to deal with.
Um , obviously there's been one facility in the country that's at it and it's on the front page of every paper and every news gas . That's a long and ongoing problem. If they aren't, you know , perhaps somebody can track the coronavirus reputational damage for years to come.
Right. And obviously that , you know, in a nursing home setting, the residents are obviously not traveling them.
No, I mean, obviously employees getting sick, but they lose enough of them, you know, then they lose their staff to take care of the residents, which is a whole secondary issue behind. Let's think about this too . Jason and I were talking a little bit, Oh , you think about right now, the total number of cases in the U S sits at 754 cases. Uh , there's been 27 deaths.
And if you think about , um, the mortality right around that is , um, is really operating probably lower than what the media is pushing out there because 18 or 19 of those deaths total in the U S came from the Seattle nursing home . So I think that's something that people have to pay attention to is, is, is really , um, yep . Definitely.
Yeah, the context, there's a lot of misinformation going on right now as it reloads to, to Corona virus . What , uh, what recommendations do you guys have for insurance agents and you know, the, the people who run these facilities, what can they be doing right now to help mitigate the risk?
I think from a, you know, from a facility standpoint , um, you know, the things they can do is, it certainly just makes sure that they're , uh, continue to be updated and informed from their , you know, from their local department of health as to any , um, changes as far as if there's going to be any potential , um, uh , isolation orders or quarantine orders.
Certainly do what they can to , uh , monitor their staff and any visitors of , you know, and , and discourage any visitors who may or may, may be sick or may have been in contact with someone who's sick, but take whatever measures they are, are appropriate to protect the residents. And primarily that has to do with, you know, monitoring your staff and monitoring the number of visitors that enter the facility, either to see residents or vendors that you have coming in.
Um, so it's certainly no easy task for sure.
I'd say wash your, you know, the old flu guidelines , wash your hands, wash them off. And then I heard someone say the other day, wash your hands like you just ate a jalapeno pepper and you're about to change your contact.
Do you think it's a wise decision for these facilities to have a, have a plan and communicate that out to their staff and, and you know , the families of , of the residents there,
I think they all, all the facilities have a plan in place for pandemic . It's just a function of getting it out and dusting it off and making sure that the staff is 100% sure as to, you know , what it says and how they're going to, you know, how they're gonna react to this and how they're gonna handle it going forward. And then secondarily to that is making sure that all the stakeholders in the nursing home, the residents, the family members, et cetera, there is a plan and exactly what it says .
So they know the residents are being cared for. Yeah. I think from a liability perspective, you know, like true and said, you know, nursing homes are heavily regulated and you know, they have to file a number of different protocols and procedures and have these things in place. Uh , I think the key to insulate themselves as much as possible from potential negligence or liability is to make sure that they're following whatever plans they have in place.
If they have a protocol in place for how to deal with a pandemic or a viral outbreak or then they need to make sure that they're following the guidelines that they themselves have filed with the state or have posted in their facility. That's the best way to insulate themselves against liability, doing the things that they're supposed to do. And that they said they would do when they don't execute on those types of plans, that's where they'll, they'll potentially be exposed to more liability.
Yeah. When it comes to insurance to what, what do we need to be looking at? What do agents need to be looking at and telling their insurance to look at when it relates to a Corona virus?
Uh, I think, like we said, I think, you know, certainly encouraging you, making sure that the facilities are following the roadmap that they themselves, you know , created or developed , uh , you know, whatever emergency plans they have, they should be in place. Whatever common sense measures they can take , uh , to , to protect the residents , uh, they should do certainly open communication with the family members and my truest seven to various stakeholders in the facility.
Just do the best they can in that regard. I think from an insurance perspective, we've already been reviewing policies and different politics, different company forms to identify where there might be potential issues. Generally speaking, I don't want to , you know, make a blanket statement, but generally speaking, most of the professional identity forms do not exclude, you know, communicable disease or you know, any kind of bio agents like that. However you will see exclusions like that.
Generally speaking on the general liability coverage part, which not unexpected, I think just probably reviewing the policy to see if there's anything to be overtly concerned about. Um , there's certainly potential coverage for or some limited coverage for evacuation expense if that's necessary. But out of fear that will vary from form to form. You know, there's obviously potential risks or potential opportunities for coverage under the property form for business interruption.
But I think that's for another discussion. That's kind of I think outside of our area of expertise, I think the one thing you have to really be careful about and you need to , we need to counsel our agents and our insureds is that remember on liability policies , uh , particularly on the professional liability side, there has to be the ability to prove there was negligence and bodily harm.
So I guess the , one of the bigger questions is, let's say that there is someone in a facility who becomes infected with the coronavirus and you know, their family member finds out about it. The question to ask is, Hey, what's the outcome of that particular situation? How did the facility handle it? Did they follow the proper guidelines that we talked about earlier? Did they go through their risk management protocols and follow them to the T ?
And at the end of the day when it's all said and done, there has to be a way for claim to be brought that may be covered. We're not sure if there was, there had to be, you have to have a way to prove negligence and there has to be actual harm to do that. So , uh , that's going to be, that's going to be the debate, right? When when this , when this gets kicked down the road a little further, a resident getting infected or getting the virus isn't in itself negligent. Right?
Because some of it is inevitable or uncontrollable. I think, like Ruthie said, that best needs the operators, the insurance can do that . Facilities can do is make sure that they're taking all the reasonable steps they can, that they're executing on the plan that they have in place. You're doing the things that they can do to control, you know, either the spread or the initial infection and or spread of, of, of any viral virus in their facility.
The insurance question is really a DuPont parts, especially for the insurance agent. Right? Right. Now you're in the risk mitigation stage of the issue . How do we avoid or mitigate any future potential claims? And we talked briefly about the evacuation expense. There may be some expenses that are provided by the policy cook void , bigger traditional liability, bodily injury, liability claims down the road. And there's also risk management tools available.
Partially all the carriers in the space grew up to date on everything that's going on. It's a prudent for an insurance look at what those risk management services are and making sure that their clients are aware of those services and using those services to mitigate any .
And what's the best way for them to get ahold of those? Is that just a contact their CRC broker or do they all have information to go straight to the carrier? You think they're communicating this?
I think now the agents are, are probably at this point, the agents , particularly the ones that specialize in senior living are well ahead of the message at this point. I think they're delivering a message of, Hey, let's really try to stay calm about this and understand where the real risk is. Understand , um , that , that , um, you know, you do have a plan in place, follow it.
And so I do think that that's, I think the communication between the retail brokerage , uh , world and their insured is critical. And we've been doing our , our, you know, our part to inform our agents about what resources are available to them, you know, wet , like , like rusty and true, et cetera .
Whether it's, you know, a third party risk management vendor, like an Omni shore pendulum that, you know, CRC uses and a lot of our insurers partner with, they're aware of those services that are available and certainly sharing our own information like this podcast and other , um, uh , other communication that we've been sending out to kind of make sure that our clients are aware of, you know, whatever information we have on an and what resources might be available for their clients.
So how do you all see this , uh , effecting renewals? Is this gonna play into , uh , the next time someone goes to get insurance renews?
That's a good question. Um , we rusty , I'm not, be interrupted to hear if you guys heard this too, but I , I had seen a couple of insurers , um, suggest a possible communicable disease exclusion to the professional. Personally what I would say B or C would add , we would absolutely push back against that occurring. I think that would be an absolute overreach. I mean the intent of insurance is to protect clients against reasonable risk .
This is certainly a reasonable risk that is for the most part outside of their control. We would certainly work to ensure that any questions that would be no additional exclusions added on. If for some reason there was no way to avoid that, we would have to communicate it to clients . But , um , I think other than that, I haven't seen too many insurers, you know, making a , an issue of this yet.
You know, as we go down further down the road with this and seeing how it evolves, depending on how far it evolves or if it, hopefully it doesn't involve any worse. But if it does, you know, maybe we, there might be a bigger push from a cupboard standpoint. But like I said, from our standpoint, we would certainly do everything we could to push back against that. What are your thoughts on that? I mean , I think the insurance industry is kind of like the stock market.
You know , they want to avoid the unknown. And so I think in the near term, like Jason said, we may see some carriers that are trying to jump down and protect themselves from what is the unknown. But like he also said, we're going to obviously do our due diligence to make sure that , uh , that our clients are ultimately protected from overreaching by the insurance company.
But I think as things play out and the facts known it will, it will kind of guide the insurance companies as to how they're going to react. So I think it's really tumbledL a nd that's an area.
And I think what you'll see is this week progresses in the next several weeks after this that you know, as we've all read articles about the distribution of the test kits and where they are, who has access to them and who does not, you know, what States may be testing a more on a wide spread basis. I think what you'll see is you'll see people start making better educated decisions as to how they're going to address it.
And I'm speaking specifically to the insurance side of things because obviously as the number of test kits get a increase and more people are tested for this specific rise, obviously the numbers will go up. I mean, that's just the way that things like this work. And so I think to have a calm, measured approach around when we see that happening, which it will, all the experts say that that will happen.
Um, but I think that the insurance companies will start looking at the data and say, okay, what's the real death right upon contracting this, you know, if you're, if you're a relatively healthy person , uh , what's the death rate for the population right now that's most wildly effective, which is the 80 plus age group. So I think more will be known about how the insurance world is going to react as the data gets bigger.
So have we missed anything? Is there anything you guys want to cover that we should, we should hit on?
No, I think, I think, you know , like rusty setting, I think one thing is certainly to encourage people who, you know, do their best not to get caught up in the, in , in some of the , the kind of, the overwhelming amount of information and visibility that's out there. Certainly, you know, everyone should be diligent, vigilant, you know, be smart about things. Don't expose yourself on necessarily the risk , but you know also to keep it in some level of perspective, you know?
But like I said, certainly make sure that everybody is doing the things that from a common sense perspective you can do protect not only yourself but from an insurance perspective. And as you know, the senior women just encouraged the operators in the, in the facilities to, you know , do the things to date that are within their control to control, you know, to minimize the risk of infection and spread it with anything. The most important thing would be the communication piece , right?
Because there's a lot of myths, there's a lot of misinformation out there right now and we've talked about these nursing homes have policies and procedures in place for this type of issue and it really needs to be communicated from them directly to their family members, their residents, anybody that's got an interest in the facility that, you know , they do have their heads around it, they are monitoring it and that this sky's not falling.
So you would say controlling perception is probably a good idea here through an effective communication plan?
Yeah, I mean I think that's probably as or more important than anything else. I'd totally, I think that's usually good advice because I think goes to the premise of managing expectations and managing the expectations of family members as to what, you know, what , what's being done and what's reasonable to be done.
Um, you know, I think that's one of the bigger challenges nursing homes in general have is, you know, improving the way that they communicate, not just with the residents but not at the communicate to ways to improve the way they communicate with their family members who primary for the most part are the ones that usually are the drivers behind any lawsuits. So I think, you know, the more they communicate, the more transparent that they are.
Uh, that'll only help minimize any potential liability that comes out of this, this event. Uh , I agree . I agree with that 100%. What you both said is , is true. And I would add one more thing. And I would say, look , if I'm, if I'm an owner of a senior living facility right now and I have some concerned family members, I would challenge them, look through your own research. I would show them the data that I'm aware of.
I would show them that you know, what the real numbers are on a worldwide basis and then say, Hey, here's the numbers in the United States. Here's the numbers in our area. As we gain more information, don't go buy into the ten second news shot headlines or do your research and challenge , uh , family members to do the same and say, look, let's, let's form our own opinions and not buy into the media hype. This is probably going to continue for the next few weeks for sure.
So , um, we, we, right now we , we have access to data , uh , that we never had before. You know, when, I guess I wish that if we'd had this, when the flu probably first came out like we do now, we would probably have even a better handle on that than we do. So I would, I would just challenge people to form their own opinion.
Yeah. And especially with the way the topic and this issue has become politicized, I think that the level of misinformation is at a fever pitch that makes it even a little bit more frustrating. Right. Doesn't help with the situation at all? No .
Okay. So if our agents want some more information on this or want to review a policy or want some clarification, of course they can reach out to any of our brokers. Where do you guys feel the best resources within CRC are? Obviously you three. Right. And we also have a , uh , a lot of other experts across the country, right?
No , I think, you know, certainly we encourage , we would encourage our agents to reach out. They can certainly reach out to any one of the three of us and we'll be happy to answer any questions or provide any feedback. But also, you know, if they haven't , I have a broker at CRC that they place , you know , healthcare related accounts with, certainly reach out to those people.
But you know, if they don't know somebody, they can certainly reach out to anyone of the three of us and follow us on linked in .
That's probably one ,
that's why I used to keep up with what's going on. We're posting regularly, often and, and the trends are , uh, are there on LinkedIn for sure. For sure.
For sure. And you guys, just, so just for those agents that don't know, we have an organized national healthcare practice, right? So we've got members across the country that are all sharing information. So it's not just Jason and rusty and true that have access to this information at our experts. We're all sharing it with each other. So it's important to know that and know that when you reach out to a CRC broker, you're getting the best you really are. So
CRC has been our practice group for, from a professional liability standpoint and our subset group for health care , which you rusty and I lead. Um , we work very hard, all of us to make sure we're communicating regularly and making sure that all of our professionals have access to the same information and resources. Um, you know, so our clients get a consistent experience regardless of who they talk to.
Okay. Well thanks so much guys. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule, especially now with Corona virus going on , uh, to talk with us today. I'm sure we'll have plenty more to talk about in the future, the placing you first podcast. A quick note, CRC group is hiring and we want you to join our team CRCs expanding nationwide, opening new offices and hiring at all levels. Join one of the nation's leading wholesale brokers today by finding the careers page on CRC group.com.
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