Aon/ASHRM Liability Study: Claims Frequency, Severity Stable; Statistical Correlation Between Worker and Patient Safety Established

​Hospital claim frequency and severity continue to remain relatively stable—with "a very flat cost of risk"—as they have for the past eight years, according to Eric Johnson, FCAS, MAAA, assistant vice president, Aon Global Risk Consultants, sharing the results of the Aon/ASHRM Hospital and Physician Professional Liability Benchmark Study on September 27, 2016, at the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) conference in Orlando, Florida. This year's study included data from 107 health systems and 608,155 occupied beds—approximately 29% of the U.S. healthcare industry. The average loss rate for hospital professional liability was $2,610 per occupied bed equivalent, a decrease from $2,790 last year, and the severity, or total cost per claim, rose very slightly from last year. Data collected for the 2015 study include 98,094 nonzero claims from hospital professional liability and 11,200 nonzero claims from general liability, with incurred losses of $16.5 billion and $283 million, respectively. The loss rate for professional liability of employed physicians, which Johnson deemed "more variable," was $5,380 per class 1 physician (defined as one full-time physician in internal medicine), an increase from $5,090 last year.