CRICO
For more than 30 years, the CRICO companies have provided industry-leading medical professional liability coverage, claims management and patient safety resources to its members. In 1976, the crisis of insurance availability led the Harvard Medical Institutions to form a “captive” medical professional liability insurer, CRICO, an offshore insurance company operating and domiciled in the Cayman Islands. Harvard’s model of creating an offshore captive—an insurer owned by the facility or health care system it exclusively insures—was later replicated by other health systems across the U.S.
Today, we represent the largest medical professional liability carrier in Massachusetts, distinguished by the varied size and structure of our member organizations. Coverage is limited to employees of, and physicians sponsored by, a member institution, each of whom must meet CRICO’s eligibility criteria. Through more than four decades of experience protecting the Harvard medical community’s clinicians and organizations, CRICO has established itself as a leader in medical professional liability (MPL). It is our mission to safeguard the assets and reputations of our insured organizations and the clinicians they employ. For those few providers who find themselves named in a malpractice suit, CRICO delivers a comprehensive and robust defense strategy, which includes extensive support services to help them manage what can be a long and drawn out course of events.
Founded more than 40 years ago, the CRICO insurance program insures all of the Harvard medical institutions and their affiliates, providing coverage to 26 hospitals, 14,000 physicians, more than 300 other health care organizations, and in excess of 100,000 other clinicians and employees. In 1979, The Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions Incorporated (RMF) was established to, among other things, implement a data-driven approach to reducing medical error through clinical analysis of malpractice claims. That analysis has been, and continues to be, shared with member institutions to inform their own patient safety initiatives.