Protecting Leading Edge Technology at Loma Linda University Medical Center
An interview with Mark L. Hubbard, ARM, Vice President
Loma Linda University Medical Center
Loma Linda University Medical Center is a large tertiary teaching facility with over 900 beds providing care to more than 33,000 inpatients and a half million outpatients annually. The medical center operates some of the largest clinical programs in the US in areas such as neonatal care and outpatient surgery and is recognized as the international leader in infant heart transplantation and proton treatments for cancer.
“A large portion of the hospital’s risk is self-insured. All the Loma Linda entities have pooled the risk on campus for those types of exposures that we feel comfortable assuming the risk on,” notes Mark Hubbard, Vice President, Loma Linda University Medical Center. “With respect to the proton accelerator, this represented for us a unique exposure and on that we didn’t feel confident that we should try to self-insure.”
An alternative to conventional radiation therapy, high-energy protons were first used to treat patients with certain cancers in the 1950s. Proton beam therapy enables healthcare professionals to deliver full or higher doses of radiation to a tumor that might be impossible to get to via surgery while sparing surrounding healthy tissues and organs.
Research and laboratory applications continued to be developed over the next three decades but it was not until the opening of the proton treatment facility at Loma Linda University Medical Center in 1990 that the full benefits of proton treatment could be offered to patients with a wide variety of cancers. Loma Linda University’s accelerator was the first hospital-based proton accelerator developed, built, and implemented in the United States and is the world's smallest variable-energy proton synchrotron. Designed to deliver a focused beam of energy sufficient to reach the deepest tumors in patients, proton treatment is valuable for treating localized, isolated, solid tumors.
Loma Linda University partnered with the US Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
“Because we developed this technology in partnership with Fermilab, we own the technology which meant we also own the product liability exposure,” noted Hubbard.
“The litigation exposure from product liability is quite different from the traditional risks that we’ve typically self-insured. The proton accelerator represented a unique exposure for the hospital.”
Loma Linda University Medical Center selected Medmarc to provide tailored coverage for this technology.
“Medmarc offers very specialized expertise and possesses knowledge about the specific risks that are associated with this type of technology,” said Hubbard. “The accelerator really represents a new type of risk that we face and partnering with Medmarc helps us manage it..”
With a vision of innovating excellence, Loma Linda University Medical Center continues to develop technologies to advance patient treatment and care. In turn, the medical center continues to rely on Medmarc to provide insurance protection and risk management solutions for these leading-edge advancements.
“Medmarc plays an important role in helping the Medical Center stay at the forefront of clinical innovation,” notes Hubbard. “Medmarc’s underwriters certainly understand this business and they understand the risks the Medical Center faces as a product manufacturer. Some of this new technology and the research that leads up to it may not be viable if we couldn’t transfer the risks that are associated with these kinds of activities. If we had to bear this risk, we’d have to re-evaluate pursuit of product development. Without Medmarc, would be unwilling to pursue certain ventures because represent too much exposure for us.”
For more information on Loma Linda Medical Center’s Proton Treatment and Research Center, please visit www.protons.com