Ms. Costante: MIIX is a medical professional liability company that was established in 1977, and we are coming up on our 25th anniversary, which we will celebrate in 2002. We were created as a single state reciprocal insurer at a time when physicians were really struggling with access to medical liability insurance, as part of an initiative that was spearheaded by the Medical Society of New Jersey. In 1999, we actually completed our demutualization and became a publicly traded company. We write approximately 200 million in premiums a year, all medical professional liability insurance. Half of that premium continues to be centered in New Jersey and the other half is distributed across approximately 25 states. We are an admitted carrier of national scope at this point. In terms of our history, I guess the thing that's most important to note is that the whole medical malpractice sector, like the P&C sector, is a cyclical one. Whenever you see spikes in frequency or severity, the larger, multi-line companies will move away from writing medical malpractice insurance for some period of time. It's during these times of restricted access that the physicians and the hospitals are really faced with the need to look for alternate sources of professional liability coverage. If you look back to the mid-1970s, that's a phenomenon that you would have seen happening throughout the country. It was during that time that MIIX, and most single state specialty companies, were born. What we've seen, through the 1990s, is some of those single state specialty companies dissolved and some of them merged. Some of them really felt that they were strong enough to undertake a growth initiative and began to write regionally rather than in a single state way. A few of us went public. MIIX is one of the insurers that accomplished a regional expansion, followed by a national expansion, and then an IPO. I come from perhaps a more eclectic background than my predecessors. All my experience is in health care, primarily on the provider side. I grew up in the world of hospital administration, then progressed into more general healthcare consulting, working primarily on the West Coast, helping healthcare systems and large physician groups adjust to the demands of managed care. I spent a lot of time learning the constraints of reimbursement in the new managed care model, dealing with the impact it had on healthcare program development and quality. I came to MIIX in 1996 to establish a consulting company that would focus on the needs of MIIX's physician and hospital insureds. My first three years at MIIX were devoted to getting the consulting company up and running. Then I moved over to the insurance side to lead our New Jersey business unit, which accounts for approximately half the premium of the company. I was then promoted to COO, and more recently to President and CEO. So, I come to this position with a blend of insurance and healthcare expertise, which I really think characterizes what the company is about. We are an insurance company that needs to intimately understand not only the dynamics of the insurance industry, but also the dynamics of health care in general, and the provider community specifically.
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