Best Pharmacy Business Insurance

The Hartford tops our ranking for pharmacy business insurance with a MoneyGeek score of 4.78 out of 5. It offers competitive rates and quality service for pharmacists and independent pharmacy owners. Compare quotes from NEXT and Coverdash to find the best fit for your pharmacy.

Note: We based all scores on a pharmacy business with two employees across professional liability, general liability, workers' comp and BOP policies.

Coverdash offers the most affordable pharmacy business insurance with BOP coverage at $63 monthly and general liability at $44 monthly. For professional liability, Chubb leads at $46 monthly, followed by NEXT at $49. NEXT also provides the cheapest workers' compensation at $6 monthly for pharmacists and independent pharmacy owners.

In general, pharmacy business insurance costs are the following for the four most popular coverage types:

• General Liability: $62 on average per month, ranging from $54 to $72, depending on the state
• Workers' Comp: $6 on average per month, ranging from $5 to $7, depending on the state
• Professional Liability (E&O): $57 on average per month, ranging from $50 to $70, depending on the state
• BOP Insurance: $91 on average per month, ranging from $78 to $107, depending on the state

Required coverage for pharmacists varies by state, but professional liability and general liability are essential for protecting your practice from medication errors and customer accidents. Workers' compensation, property insurance and cyber liability add crucial protection as your staff grows and you handle more prescriptions daily.

• Workers' Compensation: Required in most states once you hire employees. Covers medical expenses and lost wages when your pharmacy technicians strain their backs lifting inventory boxes, develop carpal tunnel from prescription data entry or slip on spilled medication while restocking.
• Professional Liability Insurance (Errors and Omissions): Protects when dispensing errors happen, like mixing up look-alike medications like Zantac and Xanax, entering wrong dosages into your system or missing dangerous interactions between a patient's prescriptions. One malpractice lawsuit averages $100,000 to defend. Most independent pharmacists carry $1 million per occurrence/$3 million aggregate limits.
• General Liability Insurance: Covers customer injuries in your pharmacy, such as elderly patients slipping near the prescription counter, customers tripping over delivery boxes during restocking or someone getting hit by falling merchandise from overhead storage. Also protects if you're sued for accidentally disclosing patient information. Typical coverage starts at $1 million per occurrence/$2 million aggregate.
• Commercial Property Insurance: Essential protection for your prescription inventory, compounding equipment and pharmacy management software. Covers losses if fire destroys your controlled substance vault, thieves break in overnight or severe weather damages your climate-controlled medication storage. Independent pharmacies carry $200,000 to $500,000 in inventory coverage alone, plus equipment protection.
• Cyber Liability Insurance: Critical since you transmit electronic prescriptions and store patient health records daily. Covers costs from ransomware locking your pharmacy system during peak hours, hackers stealing patient data or HIPAA violation penalties after a data breach. Consider $1 million in coverage since the average pharmacy data breach costs $150,000 to resolve.
• Business Interruption Insurance: Pays lost income and ongoing expenses if fire, severe weather or equipment failure forces you to close temporarily. Crucial since you can't fill prescriptions or bill insurance during repairs, yet you're still paying rent, utilities and staff salaries. Most independent pharmacies operate on 3% to 5% profit margins with little cash cushion.
• Crime Insurance: Protects against pharmacy robberies targeting opioids, employee theft of controlled substances and fraudulent prescription schemes. Critical given the valuable narcotics you stock, such as oxycodone, Adderall and other Schedule II medications that thieves specifically target. Typical limits run $100,000 to $250,000 depending on your controlled substance inventory value.
• Commercial Auto Insurance: Needed if you offer free prescription delivery to homebound patients or nursing homes. Covers accidents during delivery routes and protects you from liability when pharmacy staff use personal vehicles to transport medications between your locations.
• Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI): Protects against wrongful termination claims from fired pharmacy technicians, discrimination lawsuits or harassment allegations from staff. One employment dispute costs $50,000 or more to defend, even when you've followed proper procedures. Coverage starts at $1 million for small pharmacies.

Compare quotes from multiple insurers and leverage pharmacy-specific discounts to find affordable coverage that protects your practice. Getting business insurance requires strategic shopping beyond just the lowest price.

Pharmacy business insurance protects your practice from medication errors, customer injuries, data breaches and controlled substance theft. The Hartford offers the best overall coverage with strong customer service and competitive rates, while Coverdash provides the most affordable option starting at $41 monthly. Compare quotes from multiple insurers to find coverage that matches your prescription volume and services offered.

We answer frequently asked questions about pharmacy business insurance:

We selected the best business insurer for pharmacies based on the following criteria:

• Affordability (50% of score): The lower a company's costs compared to the competition based on our base profile for four core coverage types, the better the company performs.
• Customer service (30% of score): We scored providers on overall customer satisfaction using industry studies, customer review forum ratings and public forum sentiment analysis from sites like Reddit.
• Coverage (15% of score): We scored business insurance providers for this category based on the flexibility, payment and actual coverage options.
• Financial stability (5% of score): Using financial stability industry ratings from companies like AM Best and Moody's, we created an overall rating to judge how likely companies are to pay out claims compared to the competition.

All pricing in this article is based on the following base profile to represent the vast majority of small businesses in all states:

• Three-person business with two employees
• Coverage: $1 million per occurrence and $2 million total per year for all but BOP, which includes the same coverage plus $5,000 of business property coverage
• $150,000 in payroll
• $300,000 annual revenue