What we’re doing about medical and midwife professional indemnity insurance

We oversee the Australian Government's indemnity insurance schemes, engage with stakeholders and conduct reviews and reforms as needed.

Programs and initiatives

We oversee the medical and midwife professional indemnity insurance schemes. These schemes provide funding to help with the cost of insurance premiums and claims.

Reforms and reviews

We review the medical indemnity insurance industry and schemes and related legislation as needed.

Our past reforms and reviews include the:

Consultation and engagement

We consult and engage with our stakeholders to help us understand their needs. Our stakeholders include:

  • medical indemnity insurers
  • health and medical professionals
  • patients and consumers.

We also work with other government agencies on indemnity insurance, including:

Reporting

Universal cover reporting

Medical indemnity insurers must not impose a risk surcharge or refuse to cover a medical practitioner, except in certain circumstances. After the end of the financial year, they must report the number of times they do either.

We report the total number for all insurers each financial year, in line with legislative requirements.

Medical indemnity universal cover annual reports

These annual reports provide the total number of refusals by insurers to provide indemnity cover to medical practitioners. They also provide the total number of contracts with risk surcharges, withdrawals from contracts, and complaints to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

Reporting on the run-off cover schemes

Medical indemnity legislation also requires annual:

Legislation

We administer indemnity legislation on behalf of our ministers.

Date last updated:

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