Legal Notices and Privacy Policy

Updated January 1, 2020

Legal Notices

The Doctors Company strives to ensure that information contained on our website is current, accurate, and reliable. Factors beyond The Doctors Company’s control, however, preclude us from any offer of any warranty or guarantee of any nature concerning the accuracy or reliability of any information contained on our website. The Doctors Company additionally assumes no responsibility for any linked content.

The Doctors Company website is intended to serve as a resource to physicians and other persons interested in professional liability insurance and issues affecting the practice of medicine. Users of The Doctors Company website are warned that they rely on any information contained on the website at their own risk.

All policy provisions are subject to underwriting approval and may vary from state to state. Information on this website should not be construed as a coverage interpretation of the policy in whole or in part. Any actual coverage determination is subject to all of the terms and conditions of the actual policy, endorsements, application, and any actual claims.

By accessing The Doctors Company’s website, you have directed your system to a computer located in the State of California. Any and all disputes arising from the content of The Doctors Company’s website are to be governed exclusively by the laws of the State of California and jurisdiction shall be subject exclusively to courts located within Napa County, California.

Privacy Policy

The Doctors Company group of insurance companies recognizes the importance of respecting and maintaining the privacy of our applicants, members, and others. In the course of providing members and others with a wide array of services designed to fulfill their insurance needs, it is necessary for The Doctors Company to gather information. For members and applicants, we rely almost exclusively on the applications and supporting material you give to us. As such, your personal information will now, or sometime in the future, be collected by, disclosed by, or transferred to The Doctors Company. Please read this Privacy Policy to understand what we do with personal information and your applicable rights. By accessing the site and using our services, you agree to terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy.

We must sometimes ask our members and applicants for protected health information protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the HITECH Act amendments of 2013 (HIPAA). Our applications, for example, ask for information regarding any claims made against you in the past, and our claims staff may need medical information to provide claims service. Our risk management/patient safety staff may also need medical information to assist you in minimizing risk and increasing patient safety. Some of this information may be covered by HIPAA. To address this, we have added a business associate agreement (BAA) to each of our policies that confirms we will keep the protected information confidential as required by HIPAA. The BAA simply means that persons sharing protected information in the course of authorized business will do so in compliance with the requirements of HIPAA. This agreement does not change your insurance coverage.

What Information Do We Collect?

Depending on your relationship with The Doctors Company, we may collect and process various types of your personal information, most of which we get by asking you to provide it to us. The types of personal information we may collect include the following:

  • Contact information (such as name, email address, mailing address, and phone number).
  • Personal identifiers (such as your Social Security number, driver’s license/state ID number, passport number, National Provider ID [NPI], medical license number, policy number, claim information, and account number).
  • Financial information (such as credit/debit card number, bank account number, and credit score).
  • Employment/professional information (such as occupation, title, and work experience).
  • Demographic information (such as age, date of birth, gender, and ethnicity).
  • Health-related information (such as medical history).
  • Biometric information (such as fingerprints, voice recordings, and photographs/images).
  • Geo-location information (such as city/state, ZIP code, and physical location or movements).
  • Internet or other electronic/online network activity information (such as IP address, browsing history, search history, device type, operating system, and duration of session).
  • Inferences drawn from the above categories of personal information reflecting your preferences, characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, and abilities.

In addition to the above categories, you may provide us with additional pieces of information when you apply for coverage, report a claim, apply for a job, or create an account, update, or add information to your account.

How Do We Collect Information?

The Doctors Company may collect your personal information from a variety of sources including:

  • You or your agent;
  • Your employer(s);
  • Other insurance entities such as other insurers, reinsurers, brokers, and third-party administrators;
  • Claims adjusters;
  • Credit agencies;
  • Government and non-government databases of public information such as medical boards;
  • Claimants and their legal representatives; and
  • Through automated technologies and online browser tools, including the use of cookies; and
  • From other third-party service providers or business partners.

The Doctors Company website utilizes service providers such as Google Analytics that may collect and retain personal information via files such as cookies. Read Google’s Privacy Policy.

Reasons We Collect/Use Information

There are a variety of reasons why The Doctors Company may collect and share your personal information. The reasons are as follows:

  • Perform our services and respond to requests. We may use personal information to analyze and underwrite your policy/submission, provide the services or products you buy, process payments, administer and handle claims (if any), provide a vigorous multi-disciplinary defense, and perform other services requested by you.
  • Protection and security. We may use personal information to protect the security and integrity of The Doctors Company, our users, and others.
  • Administrative communications. We may use personal information to send you important information regarding our services, such as changes to our terms, conditions, and policies and/or other administrative information.
  • Marketing communications and mailing lists. We may use personal information to show you content based on your interests, including to notify you about our promotions or invite you to participate in surveys.
  • Research and surveys. We may use personal information from you, our service providers, publicly available sources, and other third parties to conduct healthcare research to improve care and outcomes, including sharing information with academic, professional, or other entities for this research.
  • Internal business purposes. We may use personal information collected from the categories mentioned for our internal business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, developing new offerings, and monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of our services.
  • Legal and regulatory. We may use personal information to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations (such as compliance with anti-money laundering procedures or tax reporting, and to prevent fraud or other illegal activities).

The types of information that may be gathered by The Doctors Company in connection with your use of our website, which we would ask you to provide us, include information relevant to your policy and coverage, including information about your training, credentials, work history, and license status. We may also gather information concerning any claims previously instituted against you by patients or actions by licensing bodies.

The information above illustrates, but does not exhaust, the kind of information that may be necessary for The Doctors Company to collect in order to serve our members’ insurance-related needs. Subject to the provisions above, we will not intentionally disclose any information of a confidential or sensitive nature unless authorized or we are required to disclose the information pursuant to a court order or request from the courts, law enforcement, or regulatory officials.

The Doctors Company does not offer financial incentives for the use of personal information.

With Whom We Share Information

The Doctors Company may share or otherwise disclose your personal information we collect to the following third-party business partners:

  • Affiliated entities. We may share your personal information to our subsidiaries and corporate affiliates, including future subsidiaries and affiliates of The Doctors Company, to use your information consistent with this Privacy Policy.
  • Third-party service providers. We may share personal information with third-party service providers who provide us with services, such as data analysis, online advertising, payment processing, order fulfillment, IT services, customer service, and other similar services. We grant our service providers access to personal information only to the extent needed for them to perform their functions and require them to protect the confidentiality and security of such personal information.
  • Commercial partners. We may share personal information with unaffiliated third parties who partner with us to deliver our services or on our commercial activities including reinsurers, brokers, third-party administrators, appointed legal counsel, and other claims professionals. Depending on the elections you have made and the nature of the joint activity, these third parties may contact you regarding products or services of interest. However, we do not sell personal information with unaffiliated third parties for their own marketing purposes.
  • Business transfers or assignments. In the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our business or assets (including without limitation in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), we may transfer any information that we collect from site users or offline to a third party.
  • Law enforcement; emergencies; compliance. We may disclose personal information about you to others as we believe to be appropriate: (i) under applicable law including laws outside your country of residence; (ii) to comply with legal process (iii) to respond to requests from public and government authorities including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (iv) to enforce our terms and conditions; (v) to protect our operations and property interest; (vi) to protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of The Doctors Company, our employees, users of our service, or others; and (vii) to permit us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages we may sustain.
  • At your direction. We may use and disclose your personal information as you otherwise consent.

The Doctors Company will not voluntarily disclose or use the information except as outlined in this Privacy Policy. The Doctors Company does not sell your personal information for money. However, we may share your personal information with third parties and service providers for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Minors

The Doctors Company does not knowingly collect personal information of minors without consent from a parent or guardian. If you believe The Doctors Company possesses personal information of a minor without proper consent and you are the parent or guardian, please contact us using the information listed below.

Your Rights (California Residents)

You may have certain rights and choices regarding our processing of your personal information if you are a California resident. California law may entitle you to the following rights:

  • Right to request: You may have a right to request The Doctors Company disclose to you the categories and/or specific pieces of personal information we have collected in the last twelve (12) months, including whether your personal information is sold or disclosed and the purpose, and with whom it was shared. Your right to request such information is limited to twice every twelve (12) months.
  • Right to opt-out: You may opt-out of the sale of your personal information.
  • Right to delete: You may have a right to request that The Doctors Company delete your personal information (with limitations).
  • Right to non-discrimination: You have a right not to receive discriminatory treatment by The Doctors Company for exercising any of the above privacy rights.

Please see below for information on how to exercise your rights. Please note that a large portion of the personal information collected and processed by The Doctors Company may be out of scope for certain individual rights as it falls under exemptions for information collected under applicable federal laws, including but not limited to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

Exercising Your Rights

To exercise your rights, including submitting a verifiable request, please complete the online form or contact us using the information listed below. Because we take the protection of your personal information seriously, in order to process this request, your identity must be verified. We reserve the right to verify your identity in connection with any requests regarding personal information to help ensure that we provide the information we maintain to the individuals to whom it pertains and allow only those individuals or their authorized representatives to exercise rights with respect to that information.

If you are an authorized agent or parent/guardian making a request on behalf of an individual or your minor child, we may require and request additional information to verify that you are authorized to make that request.

We reserve the right to deny your request if we cannot verify your identity. Where we deny your request in whole or in part, we will inform you of the denial, provide an explanation of our actions, and the reason(s) for the denial.

We will not restrict or deny you access to our services because of choices and requests you make in connection with your personal information.

Our Cookies

Your browser may offer “cookies,” temporary files used to facilitate your website access. If you allow their use, cookies store small amounts of data on your computer that allow you to better experience our websites’ features. Cookie information is not shared with any other entity. You may configure your browser to reject cookies and still access our websites.

Third-party sites hyperlinked from The Doctors Company may contain cookies that are collected by the third-party site owner. These cookies are beyond our control, and we do not have access to this information.

Additionally, when you use our website, some browsers have Do Not Track (DNT) features that allow you to tell a website not to track you. The Doctors Company does honor the AdChoice DNT signals. Please be aware that limiting the ability of website technologies may limit your experience and in some cases the sites may not work.

Hyperlinks to Third-Party Sites

The Doctors Company website content includes a number of hyperlinks to the sites of third parties. These hyperlinks are provided as a service to our users when the site might contain some pertinent information for our users. The privacy policies of these third-party sites, such as the types of information collected and the use of the collected information, is unknown to and beyond the control of The Doctors Company.

Security and Protection of Personal Information

We assure you that we strive to take commercially reasonable steps to safeguard all such information of a confidential nature. We have put in place reasonable and appropriate technical and information safety safeguards designed to protect against unauthorized or unlawful processing of personal information and against accidental loss, destruction, or damage to personal information. While it is our practice to take reasonable steps to secure personal information, the confidentiality of information transmitted over the Internet cannot be guaranteed. We urge you to exercise caution when transmitting personal information over the Internet.

Changes

The Doctors Company reserves the right to amend this Privacy Policy at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the updated notice on the website and update the Privacy Policy effective date. Your continued use of the site and our services following the posting of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, the ways in which we collect and use your information described in this Privacy Policy, your choices and rights regarding such use, or wish to exercise your rights, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

Phone (800) 421-2368
Email MyData@thedoctors.com
Mail PO Box 2900
Napa, CA 94558