Our services
We believe that patients who have been harmed through a member’s negligence should receive fair and speedy compensation. We are also committed to educating healthcare professionals, drawing on our experience to alert them to the pitfalls of practice and to keep them informed about the legal and ethical framework in which they work.
Our forebears’ concerns about quackery are less relevant today, but we still have an important role to play in ensuring that patients receive quality healthcare. In addition to our educational programmes for healthcare professionals, we are active in the political sphere, bringing our influence to bear where it is needed to enhance healthcare delivery or to oppose proposals that we consider to be detrimental.
MPS is not an insurance company. The benefits of membership are discretionary – this allows us the flexibility to provide help and support even in unusual circumstances.
How we operate
MPS aims to help doctors with ethical and legal problems that arise from their clinical practice. The services we provide have a number of aims:
- Helping doctors with specific problems they face
- Promoting safer practice, reducing the number of problems in the future
- Lobbying to bring about a sensible regulatory environment.
We do this through a range of discretionary membership benefits. These are provided subject to the conditions set out in the Memorandum and Articles of Association.
Medicolegal advice
We help to resolve medicolegal dilemmas as they arise in everyday practice. Our team of medicolegal advisers – doctors with legal training – is always available to help members. MPS offers discretionary indemnity against adverse awards for costs and damages in clinical negligence cases.
Legal representation
MPS provides first-class specialist legal advice and representation in a range of circumstances, such as clinical negligence claims and disciplinary hearings.
Media relations
If members are unfortunate enough to be involved in a case that attracts adverse publicity, we can help. By preparing statements and acting as a spokesperson we can shield members from press intrusion as far as is possible.
Counselling service
MPS members who are suffering from stress as a result of an adverse incident or medicolegal matter have access to confidential professional support through telephone and face-to-face counselling.
Risk management
We produce publications, lectures and workshops on a variety of subjects, from consent to medical records. We can also offer a range of help and advice on particular risk management issues.
Lobbying
We monitor legal reforms, professional and national policy and are active on review bodies, lobbying for change and making representations to decision-making bodies.
Your membership
Your MPS membership does not come with a policy document setting out exactly what you can and can’t claim for, and in what circumstances exclusions may apply. What you do get is a copy of the Memorandum and Articles of Association, which sets out the objectives of MPS and how it operates. It specifies that the benefits of membership are to be granted at the discretion of MPS Council.
Discretion allows maximum flexibility, and is a powerful tool as threats to a member’s professional character, interests or affairs may manifest in many different ways, from clinical negligence claims to disciplinary proceedings. Over time, new threats may emerge, or existing threats may become more likely. As it is not restricted by exclusion clauses invariably found in insurance contracts, discretionary indemnity allows us to accommodate the real needs of members.
Advances in clinical practice, changing social expectations and political agendas all influence the medicolegal environment to varying degrees, and your indemnity arrangements need to be both robust enough to accommodate escalating costs and flexible enough to adjust to new and unusual demands. MPS discretionary indemnity fulfils just such a need. Because we are not confined by the fixed and rigid terms and conditions of insurance contracts, there have been numerous instances when we have exercised our discretion and assisted members with out-of-the-ordinary problems or responded quickly to emerging issues.
We believe that MPS's discretionary indemnity protection offers members the best possible professional protection, and therefore the greatest peace of mind. It allows us to exercise our discretion to assist members with problems that may not have been foreseen – and therefore not included in a contract of insurance – at the time of an incident.