SCRA Professional Liability Protection for Deployed Pros

Malpractice insurance is one of the largest fixed costs a professional carries. A physician can pay anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars a year for it. Now imagine you are a Reserve or Guard physician mobilized for a year. You are not seeing patients in your civilian practice, yet the premium bills keep coming for a policy protecting work you are not doing. The SCRA fixes exactly this.

The protection in one paragraph

50 U.S.C. § 4023 lets a covered professional who is called to active duty suspend their professional liability insurance for the period of service. While suspended, the carrier may not charge premiums and must refund what you already paid for that window. Your pre-deployment work stays covered. When you come home, you reinstate within 30 days at your old rate. The point is simple: you should not pay to insure a practice the military has paused.

Who is covered

Section 4023 applies to servicemembers who furnish health-care or legal services, and to other services the Secretary of Defense determines to be professional. In practice that reaches physicians, dentists, nurses, and other clinicians, and attorneys, among others. The common thread is that you are a professional who carries your own professional liability (malpractice or errors-and-omissions) coverage and you are ordered to active duty.

The three moving parts

Suspension and premiums. You suspend by sending the carrier a written request. During the suspension the carrier may not require premiums to be paid, and it must refund any amount you already paid for the suspension period. At your election, the carrier can instead apply that amount to the premium that comes due when you reinstate. Either way, you are not out the money for coverage you cannot use.

What stays covered, what does not. This is the part professionals most need to understand. The carrier remains liable for claims based on your professional conduct before the suspension period. A patient who sues two years from now over care you provided the month before you deployed is still covered, because that conduct predates the suspension. What the carrier is not liable for is conduct that occurs during the suspension, which is the whole logic of the provision: you are not practicing, so there is nothing to insure. The statute closes one obvious gap: a claim that you failed to make adequate provision for a patient’s or client’s care as you left is treated as conduct before the suspension, so that handoff risk stays covered.

Reinstatement. You reinstate by sending a written request within 30 days after your release from active duty. The carrier may not increase your premium above the pre-suspension amount for the minimum reinstatement period. You return to practice on the same terms you left on, not at a penalized rate.

There is one more shield worth knowing. If someone brings a civil or administrative action for damages against you during the suspension, based on your pre-suspension conduct, that action is stayed until the suspension ends. You are not forced to defend a malpractice or disciplinary case from a forward operating base.

What it is worth

Scenario	Without § 4023	With § 4023
12-month mobilization, $8,000/yr malpractice premium	Pay ~$8,000 to insure a paused practice	$0 in premiums, prepaid amounts refunded
Old claim surfaces after you return	Covered	Covered (pre-suspension conduct)
Reinstating after deployment	Possible re-rating	Same rate for the minimum period

The headline number is the premium you simply do not pay for the length of your orders, plus the refund of anything you prepaid. For a mid-career clinician that is frequently several thousand dollars, and it stacks with the SCRA protection that keeps a pre-service life insurance policy from lapsing and the reinstatement right for health insurance.

Suspend and reinstate your malpractice coverage

1. As soon as you have active-duty orders, send your professional liability carrier a written suspension request under 50 U.S.C. § 4023. Attach a copy of your orders.
2. Ask the carrier to confirm, in writing, that premiums are suspended and that prepaid premiums will be refunded or applied to reinstatement. State which you prefer.
3. Before you leave, make and document a clean handoff of every active patient or client. This protects the people who rely on you and preserves your pre-suspension coverage.
4. Keep the suspension confirmation and your orders together with your other SCRA paperwork.
5. Within 30 days after release from active duty, send a written reinstatement request. Confirm the premium returns to the pre-suspension amount for the minimum period.

What this protection is not

Suspension is not free coverage while you keep practicing. If you continue to see patients or take clients on the side during your service, you are exposed for that work and you should not suspend. The provision assumes you have stepped away from the practice.

It is not automatic. You have to send the written suspension request, and you have to send the written reinstatement request within 30 days of coming off active duty. Miss the reinstatement window and you lose the guaranteed same-rate return.

It also does not manufacture coverage for gaps you create. Conduct during the suspension is not covered, and abandoning your patients or clients without arranging care is not something the statute papers over. The clean move is to suspend deliberately, hand off responsibly, and reinstate on time. Run any close call, especially around what counts as pre-suspension conduct, past your carrier and your installation legal assistance office before you rely on it.

The law behind this: 50 U.S.C. § 4023

Professional liability protection: suspend coverage and premiums during active duty, reinstate at the old rate, pre-suspension conduct stays covered — read the statute.