Hospital and Care Home
Risk profile for a hospital or residential care home (inpatient medical care or nursing care with accommodation): the risk attributes typically assessed in underwriting and the resulting commercial insurance programme architecture.
Risk picture
Hospitals and residential care homes combine round-the-clock, shift-based operations with a resident or patient population that is largely unable to self-evacuate, elevated fire load from bedding, medical gas and electrical equipment, and a workforce exposed to patient-handling injuries, needlestick incidents and violence from confused or distressed individuals. Typical loss drivers are fire (with life-safety consequences far exceeding the property damage alone), professional and general liability claims from treatment or care errors and falls, and workforce-related losses driven by high physical and emotional workload, shift work and staff turnover. A fire or utility outage that forces patient or resident relocation can also produce a business interruption exposure disproportionate to the physical damage itself.
Risk attributes to capture
The table below is generated from this profile’s linked risk attributes and grouped by category; see the individual attribute pages for underwriting logic, evidence requirements and mitigation measures.
Coverage architecture
General liability (Betriebshaftpflicht) covers third-party bodily injury or property damage arising from the facility’s operation, while professional liability (Berufshaftpflicht) responds to claims of medical or nursing treatment error by the institution’s own staff. Employee accident cover is compulsory in Switzerland (UVG) given the physically demanding, shift-based nature of care work. Property all risks cover protects the building, medical equipment and fittings, complemented by business interruption cover aligned to the same perils and indemnity period to address lost revenue from ward closures or forced patient relocation. Cyber cover is increasingly relevant given the sensitivity of patient health data and the reliance of clinical and administrative systems on continuous availability.
Prevention
Loss prevention priorities are a fire protection concept specifically designed for a non-self-evacuating occupancy (including compartmentation, smoke control and a phased or horizontal evacuation strategy), automatic fire detection extending into patient and resident areas, regular fire drills and training tailored to staff who must evacuate others rather than themselves, and a structured safe patient-handling and workplace-violence prevention programme to control the accident hazard class driving UVG premiums.
- Kind
- Business
- Classification
- NOGA 86.10 – Hospital activities, NOGA 87.10 – Residential nursing care activities, NACE Q86 / Q87
Risk attributes to capture
Operations
- Shift Operations — Shift operations record whether a production or processing site runs single, double, triple or continuous shifts, as this pattern drives supervision levels, equipment wear and the frequency of hazardous shutdown and start-up events.
People
- Number of Employees — Employee headcount records the total number of persons employed by the policyholder, used to size exposure for liability, accident and group health underwriting and to benchmark rates per employee.
- Staff Turnover Rate — Staff turnover rate records the annual proportion of employees leaving and being replaced, used as a proxy for training gaps, morale and operational risk in liability and accident underwriting.
- Safety Training Programme — Safety training programme records whether the policyholder runs a structured, documented occupational safety training scheme for employees, a key mitigation factor in accident and liability underwriting.
- Suva Hazard Class — Suva hazard class records the occupational hazard category assigned to a business activity under the Swiss occupational accident insurance tariff, determining the base rate applied to the insured wage sum.
Fire protection
- Fire Protection Concept — Fire protection concept status confirms whether a location has a documented, coherent fire protection concept covering structural, technical and organisational measures, as queried in property insurance proposal forms.
- Fire Detection and Alarm System — Fire detection and alarm system records whether, and to what extent and design standard, a location is equipped with automatic fire detection, as queried in property insurance proposal forms.