Under the deal GPs will still need their own individual indemnity, but the MDU will provide indemnity for clinical negligence claims made agains the federations or employed staff such as practice nurses, healthcare assistants and administrative staff when they are undertaking work for the federation.
Noel Waters, MDU business development manager, said: 'The introduction of new models of care means GP federations are providing more varied services to patients and these need to be properly indemnified in case a patient comes to harm. We have been working with the 17 GP federations in Northern Ireland over a number of months to tailor an indemnity and educational package specifically for them and their staff.
'We indemnify the federations in a number of areas including for their contracts to deliver primary care pharmacist services. We also provide indemnity for individual healthcare practitioner staff such as advanced nurse practitioners in training.'
Dr David Ross, chair of the Eastern Federation Support Unit and chair of the Federation of Family Practices Down CIC, said: 'The benefit of working with the MDU is that they have provided us with corporate indemnity to suit our needs. This means we can continue to offer patients’ access to high quality services safe in the knowledge the MDU can support us if there is a clinical negligence claim against any of the federations delivering the services.'
