Doug Hall, PMSLIC

There has been a chronic shortage of insurance companies willing to insure physicians for professional liability coverage, he says. The Pennsylvania Medical Society started looking at this problem back in 1975 and incorporated the Pennsylvania Medical Society Liability Insurance Company in 1976. We wrote our first policy in 1978. Over the ensuing years, PMSLIC expanded into related coverages and neighboring states, but today it allocates its critical resourcesurplusto write only professional liability for Pennsylvania doctors. Were no longer affiliated with the Pennsylvania Medical Society. Were now a subsidiary of NORCAL Mutual, a California-based carrier that writes professional liability in a number of states.

PMSLIC is based in Harris-burg, where Hall spent most of his insurance career. A graduate from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Hall joined Penn National Insurance (PNI) in 1980 as a programmer. Over the next 16 years, he held a succession of jobs at PNI, culminating as the director in charge of the insurers Y2K project. In 1996, he was recruited to be responsible for a Donegal Mutual Y2K project in nearby Marietta, Pa. Donegal had many of the same [software] systems and faced many of the same issues, so it was an easy transition, he says.

After seeing Donegal through the successful Y2K conversion, Hall joined PMSLIC in January 2000 as director of information services. A year later, he was promoted to vice president of information services, and in 2002, his role was expanded to include administrative ser-vices. Currently, 21 of PMSLICs 101 employees plus another four outside contractors work for him. PMSLIC writes $82 million of premium all in that one class of business in that one state.

Our primary software is Genius, an integrated policy management, billing, and claims system, from Re-busIS, which was installed in 1996 and runs on an IBM AS400 platform, Hall says. It has served us well, and our users generally like it. However, its native green-screen format is less than intuitive for the occasional user. So, were currently working to put a .NET front end on it as well as to continue its integration with our data warehouse.

The data warehouse was built and installed in 2001, using SQL Server, Business Objects, and Proclarity. The warehouse now combines data from Genius and Navision, which Hall describes as being a type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. [The warehouse] is an IS managers dream, he says, and the users love it. There are a number of predesigned reports, and a very simple ad hoc report-generating capability. In addition to the standard management reports, PMSLIC uses it for other things, such as tracking customers completion of PMSLICs continuing medical education courses. PMSLIC gives risk management premium credits for doctors who successfully complete the courses. Un-derwriters also can utilize the warehouse to generate profiles of their insureds, look at experience, and create other useful information.

Another current project Hall is overseeing is the extension of PMSLICs Web capabilities, which it offers to its insured doctors. We already have some basic services online, such as the previously mentioned CME courses and the ability for a doctor to generate a certificate of insurance to provide to a hospital [needed to certify the doctor to practice there], he says, but wed like to offer more to our customers. PMSLIC expects to provide the ability for doctors, with appropriate security, to view their account history online, including premiums and payments and probably some limited claim information, he adds.

Hall also is enjoying his newest proj-ect. PMSLIC will be moving into new offices, and he is responsible for the move as well as putting together the infrastructure. Weve always done a pretty good job of keeping our users relatively current with hardware and software, he concludes. But it isnt often you have the opportunity of starting from a clean slate and designing your voice and data network from scratch. Hall aims to make the most of that opportunity.