MedPro Group — first the Physicians' Guarantee Company, then The Medical Protective Company

1899 – present

Founded: 1899, in Fort Wayne, as the Physicians' Guarantee Company, by two Fort Wayne physicians, Dr. Alpheus P. Buchman and Dr. Miles F. Porter. The company sold pre-paid legal service for the defense of medical malpractice suits; its own history calls the Physicians' Guarantee Company the first company in the United States to defend healthcare providers against malpractice claims.

What it did: Healthcare liability insurance — the defense and indemnity of physicians, surgeons, dentists and hospitals against malpractice claims. It became the nation's first insurer specializing exclusively in that line.

Course: In 1902 the Physicians' Guarantee Company became the Physicians' Defense Company. In 1907 two of its men, Byron H. Somers and Charles M. Niezer, left to found The Medical Protective Company, and in 1909 Medical Protective reorganized as an insurance company — the nation's first carrier to offer medical professional liability insurance, with defense outside limits and the insured's consent to settle required. In 1913 Medical Protective acquired the Physicians' Defense Company, bringing the two lines back under one house. The Somers family led the company until the late 1990s. By the late 1920s it was the largest insurer of medical providers in the nation, covering an estimated thirty percent of the country's physicians and surgeons; in the 1930s it produced Brief on Malpractice Law, the reference the industry called its first "medmal bible"; by the end of the 1940s it had defended more than 50,000 claims, and in the 1950s it extended cover to residents and interns. It was one of the few carriers to survive the malpractice crises of the 1970s and 1980s intact. General Electric acquired the company in 1998. In 2005 Berkshire Hathaway bought it from GE for $825 million — Warren Buffett, announcing the purchase, called Medical Protective the "gold standard" in protecting healthcare providers for more than a hundred years. (The purchase is sometimes dated 2010; the company's own history and the contemporary record fix it in 2005.) Under Berkshire the company bought Princeton Insurance, the largest healthcare liability insurer in New Jersey, in 2011, and PLICO, Oklahoma's leading healthcare liability insurer, in 2015; it began writing internationally through Berkshire affiliates in 2013–14. In 2015 Medical Protective took its present name, MedPro Group; in 2016 the Wellfleet insurance business (formerly CHP) was realigned under MedPro within the Berkshire group.

Present state: MedPro Group is a Berkshire Hathaway company headquartered in Fort Wayne, where it marked its 125th anniversary in October 2024. The press record at the anniversary gave it more than 300,000 customers and about 1,300 employees, roughly 600 of them in Fort Wayne, under chief executive Tim Kenesey; a Fort Wayne campus expansion had been completed in September 2013. It carries financial-strength ratings of A++ from AM Best and AA+ from Standard & Poor's, and counts more than half a million claims handled since 1899.

Sources:

1. MedPro Group, "Our History" (medpro.com) — the 1899 founding by Buchman and Porter, the 1902 Physicians' Defense Company, the 1907 Medical Protective founding, the 1909 reorganization, the 1913 acquisition, the Somers tenure, the 1920s market standing, Brief on Malpractice Law, the 1998 GE purchase, the 2005 Berkshire purchase and Buffett's "gold standard" words, Princeton 2011, PLICO 2015, the ratings and claims totals.
2. The Post and Mail, "MedPro Group celebrates 125 years," October 2024 — the 300,000 customers, the ~1,300 employees with ~600 in Fort Wayne, the September 2013 Fort Wayne expansion, the 2015 rebrand.
3. Business People, "125 Years of Trust" (2024) — CEO Tim Kenesey; the 1909 reorganization as the nation's first medical-malpractice insurer.
4. Cunningham Group, Medical Protective company record — the $825 million Berkshire purchase price (2005) and the 1913 indemnity course.