Professional expense insurance for multipractitioner clinics

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 59, No. 10, December 2017, Page 532 News

Many physicians today appreciate working alongside or nearby colleagues. This collaborative approach to medicine is making the occurrence of multipractitioner clinics more common. In these clinics there is typically an agreement that all physicians will share in the expenses of the operation, often including a receptionist/MOA, booking system, office insurance, rent/mortgage payments, a group benefits plan for staff (e.g., HBTF plan), office supplies, and so on. These costs can be shared in a variety of ways; common approaches are as a percentage of a physician’s billings, a flat monthly amount, or a combination of the two. These arrangements have a variety of benefits; however it is important to ask yourself what happens if one person in the clinic is in a car accident or gets sick and cannot work for a period of time, or ever? 

Some clinics include in their contract a requirement to carry a minimum amount of professional expense/office insurance, which will cover your professional and office expenses in the event that you become disabled due to illness or injury and cannot work. It can also ensure that you are able to maintain your own professional financial obligations while off work. If such insurance is a contract term in your case, you want to be sure you are aware of the amount of coverage required and that you have the appropriate plan in place. If you work in a multipractitioner clinic and you and your partners do not have professional expense/office insurance in place, you should consider it, keeping in mind that one person’s absence affects everyone.
—Channelle Sawyer, BA
Insurance Advisor

. Professional expense insurance for multipractitioner clinics. BCMJ, Vol. 59, No. 10, December, 2017, Page(s) 532 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply