Concerns about changes to MSG’s business structure
I WAS both interested and concerned to read in page three of Tuesday’s Guernsey Press that the Medical Specialist Group had now become a limited liability partnership. In my experience, an LLP is used to restrict the liability of the partners to the amount of money they have invested in the business.
This is presumably to limit any claims for professional negligence being made against individual doctors. However I have been in the medical industry for more than 30 years and if they think that an LLP will protect them from the General Medical Council they are very much mistaken.
I would have thought that the States should consider carefully the risks it is taking by employing an LLP in such an important service as health provision.
JOHN TITMUSS,
St Martin’s.
Editor’s footnote: MSG chief executive Debbie Guillou replies:
Thank you for providing the opportunity to comment on the letter from your reader.
As we have already reported, one of the key reasons for moving to an LLP was that it was a stipulation of the States of Guernsey as part of the secondary care contract.
The reason for this stipulation was that it makes the MSG a more robust business and it is important to the States and the island that the MSG does not fail. Your reader is correct that being an LLP does not limit any claims for medical negligence or malpractice and nor does it offer protection from the GMC. It is a requirement that all our consultants carry medical malpractice indemnity cover to assist them in dealing with claims of a clinical nature. That has always been the case and is unaffected by the move to an LLP.