Medical professional liability insurance is another name for medical malpractice insurance. There are two types of medical professional liability insurance, claims-made and occurrence policies. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these types of policies.

Claims-made medical professional liability insurance policies are one year long policies that are renewed each year without interrupting the coverage. Any claims made during the claims-made policy period will be covered, no matter when the incidence actually occurred, as long as the incident occurred after the original purchase of the claims-made policy. This means coverage is retroactive back to the first policy. This type of medical professional liability insurance is cheaper in the first few years of coverage as it is less likely claims will be made in the first few years of coverage. Premiums increase each year up to five years, when the reach the approximate cost of the occurrence policies. Occurrence medical professional liability insurance covers all claims that occur during the coverage period, regardless of when the claim is made. Because there is no way of knowing how many claims will eventually be made due to actions occurring any given year, the premiums for occurrence medical professional liability insurance are not necessarily cheaper in the beginning like they are with claims-made medical professional liability policies. This type of insurance covers the doctor forever against claims that result from the period in which the policy was in effect. Both of these forms of medical professional liability insurance are very expensive, so there are currently a lot of organizations working on proposals to solve the problem of compensating any patients with legitimate medical malpractice claims without doctors having to pay huge premiums for medical professional liability insurance.