Discussion: Insurance for Orienteering Meets - A Change

As President of OUSA, I regret that we need to deal with an insurance issue going forward. It seems that there has been an historic glitch in our insurance since 2007. We now find that our agent and carrier demand that all people who run in our events must be members of Orienteering USA. Sounds dumb, may be it is, but it is how the insurance industry insures sporting groups. You have to be a member to be insured!
This means that everyone who runs in the woods with one of our maps has to be a member of OUSA or become a "day member" when they register for the meet. The cost of this is nothing to the registrant and nothing to the clubs, which is the good news, but people have to deal with this change, that is the bad news. Clubs can either use their existing waivers and then have people sign up to be OUSA day members (using the verbiage given below) or use the new waiver from (accessed through the link that follows) which means people only have to sign one thing. The "day members" don't get the benefits of regular annual members like reduced A-meet fees or ONA, but they do become insured.

This is a pain in the neck but we have no options. Glen Schorr and I tried to talk the insurance people out of doing it this way, no go. The Executive Committee of OUSA discussed it and figured there were no short term options. The entire board has been appraised of the situation. A committee has been formed to try to work out a long term solution to this problem but, for now, we have to deal with the extra paperwork of having people sign up to be OUSA members for a day or printing out the new waivers and having people sign these new waivers that extend day membership to non-OUSA members as well as giving the normal waiver.

We were looking for an easier solution, we will continue looking for an easier solution but for now, please bear with us. Spread the word, make sure people are signing these pieces of paper so that our insurance will apply to all who want to enjoy our sport.

The way to access the new waiver:
http://orienteeringusa.org/news/2013/clubs/insuran...

If a club uses existing waivers, they must have people sign a document that states the following (more than one can sign on multiple lines on the form)
"The undersigned, if not already a member of Orienteering USA, is granted a one-time guest membership to Orienteering USA for the dates stated below. Please note that this membership does not entitle you to the entire list of benefits of an annual member. "

These forms are to be retained by the club in a way similar to the way the normal waivers are retained. They DO NOT have to be returned to OUSA.

Don't shoot the messenger. Seems like a dumb thing to do but if it isn't done, the club is not insured if some non-OUSA person has a problem. This includes liability and accident insurance.

Do we have to return the forms from today's event to OUSA?

Really glad I told everyone today that filling in that annoying form was a one off thing :s

If the forms are never returned to Orienteering USA, then if I were the insurance company, I would argue that "membership" conveyed by such forms is a sham. I think a bit more thinking is required by the situation.

> become a "day member"

btw, that is how 5K and 10K in Italy are done: the fine print says that for the day of the event, the participant is a member of Federazione Italiana di Atletica Leggera.

In orienteering, to participate at local meets, one must be a member of FISO (Federazione Italiana Sport Orientamento). To have permission to run on a non-competitve course (equivalent of White-Yellow-Orange), one needs to produce a medical certificate issued by your local family doctor, which costs 5-15 Euros at the most. But to run on a competitive course (eq. of Brown-Green-Red-Blue), one needs a medical certificate issued by a sports medicine doctor, which costs up to 90 euros because of all the tests. When I showed up at this city park were a local meet was happening, was told that they could not put me on the list of participants for insurance reasons, but were ok in selling me a map for one Euro, and allow me to run and mark time on my own. They call that category the "Ghosts".

yeah ..that medical certificate is required for WMOC this year. either do it at home or pay 50 euros and be dealt with in Italy

I don't mind signing the second (or third in the case of the Billygoat), waiver but---if someone is already a member of OUSA, do they need to sign the additional waiver?

@carlch: Whether the organizer opts to use the waiver linked above (actually a combination waiver and guest membership application), or their regular waiver plus an OUSA Guest Membership application, an "annual" OUSA member should only have to sign one form.

I hope that OUSA can work something out to eliminate this PITA for 2014...

Forms don't have to be returned to OUSA, the ones used the past weekend or in the future in the same way that the normal waivers are kept by clubs.
The method of signing these forms was proposed by the insurance company so that is what we are going to do, and, apparently what they think is correct. All OUSA members have to sign a normal waiver for release of liability as they have been doing for years, as do all others. They would not have to sign the extra form (which can literally be a list of names under the verbiage for becoming a day member. The revised form, provided by the website, has a statement indicating that if you are NOT a member of OUSA, you become a day member. Annual members do only have one form to sign, regardless of how the club is operating, either with the revised waiver or the old one where non members have to sign the extra form.

Just prior to getting this notice we had revised our club's waiver. We thought it would be a good idea to add permission to use photos with the use of social media. Our club has also added a cell phone assistance line in case of emergency, so the new form askes for the cell phone number of the participant as well as an emergency contact number. It feels like taking a step backward to adopt a form that doesn't collect that information. And as someone who frequently works registration the idea of having to have a second waiver makes me a little crazy... Already did make me crazy at our last meet. Hopefully we'll figure out a way to streamline this process so all the bases are covered.

This all seems like a great way to make sure that everyone who shows up knows for certain that there is a rich, mega-insurance company standing behind our otherwise rinky-dink appearance. That seems really smart.

One thing that you can do to the waiver is add your own language about cell phones, and permission for social media. You just can't delete things.

At a minimum, the local club will need to keep the waiver, at least for a reasonable period of time (check with the insurer as to how long). If someone signs a waiver, gets hurt, and then you can't find the waiver, that strikes me as a pretty unhappy circumstance.

There has been a discussion on AP about how long to keep waivers. Two years seemed to be a good amount of time. You would keep these membership forms the same length of time. By that time, anyone who was injured would know it. (Many people will keep them longer in actuality because they store them and then, after two years, will forget to throw them out.

Would this be all that is needed? (added the statement in bold to the end of our waiver.)
Example

That appears to be all that is necessary as the only waiver one of our participants needs to sign. [This is for our pre-registered participants. They fill out their details and safety contact info online which is printed out on a separate sheet and then sign this waiver to check in. Our regular day of entry form would just contain the same statement.]

So we just have to add that statement to our existing waivers and we are clear? Only pain is all the wasted paper for the 1000s of copies many clubs would have of their waivers.

Signing all participants up as 'day members' (we call them 'casual members') is something we're starting to do in Australia too, but for completely different reasons - in our case it's to get a better idea of our total number of participants. For us the major motivation is justifying our case for government funding to support sport participation; I understand that's not a factor in the US, but presumably better information on your total number of participants would still be useful in making yourselves a more attractive proposition to, for example, possible sponsors?

"The undersigned, if not already a member of Orienteering USA, is granted a one-time guest membership to Orienteering USA for the dates stated below. Please note that this membership does not entitle you to the entire list of benefits of an annual member. "

What does 'one-time' mean? Shouldn't that be removed, why can't it just say it grants guest membership for the date stated?

@blairtrewin:
OUSA collects the number of starts from each club's events (not the same as participants, a group counts as one start) when clubs recharter each year. They use is as a way to distribute the charges for insurance (and other things provided by OUSA...). Unless you are trying to get a number of unique 'casual members' (seems that would be a pita) isn't that the same thing

Per OUSA report March 19 on clubnet
In 2012 clubs genereated 47,867 starts (+4.7% vs 2011)

The waivers should be maintained until the applicable statute of limitations in the jurisdiction has run.

I just want to start out by emphasizing that no messenger shooting is intended here (Peter!). With that said, this is quite puzzling on two different levels.

If there is now a requirement that clubs throw out whatever old waiver form they had been using and instead substitute this new waiver (and that they can add to the form, if they choose), and that they need to hang onto these waivers for a while, then that seems easy enough, and so what's the big deal? Have there been any clubs that weren't already routinely, and for many years past, using waivers and hanging on to them for a while? How is this such a pain, especially set against something like, say, doing taxes (noting that this is tax day)? That's a little bit puzzling.

But much more puzzling is wondering what has changed here, and whether or not the federation and its member clubs and event organizers were or were not covered for the risks they thought they were covered for, going back as far as 2007. That seems like a fairly important thing to know, even if after the fact. Were we covered for non-members or not? Was our coverage what we thought it was?

The insurance policy that OUSA has falls within the area of specialty lines of insurance, which basically means the policies are non-standard, and are written policy by policy. The terms can be whatever the insurer and insured agree to. The phrase "apparently what they think is correct" in the world of insurance should not give any comfort. OUSA's policy (current and past policies) has either covered everyone or it hasn't, as stipulated by the terms of the specific policy. The current policy runs for the calendar year, has been in effect since the start of the year, and surely could not have changed in the past week or so unless both parties to the contract consented.

Insurance policies are underwritten considering exposures to risk, the likelihood that those exposures could result in a loss, and the likely cost of any such loss. If everyone was already covered in the past, and if everyone is going to be covered going forward by something as simple as change in a waiver form, with no increase in premiums or, apparently, any other firm requirement, and not a single other thing has changed, then exposures haven't changed a whit. But something must have changed; otherwise presumably the insurance company wouldn't be insisting on this easily satisfied requirement of at least day-of-race membership. That's quite puzzling. Of course, it could be that the insurance policy didn't cover everyone in the past, and that what has changed is now we know that. That would not be good, and if something as fundamental as that was not understood, and misunderstood for so long, then one could well wonder what else there might be about the insurance coverage that isn't understood.

Does OUSA's insurance policy require waivers as well (besides now requiring day-of-membership) or not? Off-hand I can't recall any information having ever been sent out to clubs about a waiver requirement, going back for many years now. And with a quick search of OUSA's web site I could not find any mention of a waiver requirement for local events. (I looked at local events because the vast majority of local events probably have at least some non-OUSA members showing up, and because local events are mostly what clubs do.) I emphasize I only did a quick search and not an exhaustive one, so maybe I missed spotting relevant information. However, if there is a strict waiver requirement which would dictate whether or not the insurance policy provided coverage, then it would stand to reason that it should and would be very prominently mentioned somewhere within the web site--in multiple places, actually.

Additionally, if there is in fact a strict requirement for a waiver and that any person to be covered must be a member in the federation, then it would also stand to reason that there would be a very specific requirement for record keeping (how long records must be maintained for) spelled out in the terms of the insurance policy, and that such a requirement would not be established merely by "guidelines" (again, not shooting the messenger, Peter!) that the orienteering community at large has arrived at.

So, I think it's worth knowing the following:

1) Were all participants--members and non-members of OUSA alike--covered by OUSA's insurance in the past or not?
2) Is there a requirement that waivers must be obtained from all participants, as well as a requirement for all participants to have at least day-of-race membership in OUSA?
3) What is the record keeping requirement for same, as stipulated by the terms of the insurance policy?

In answer to Swampfox........

The big deal is that we need to have all people who run in meets to be members of OUSA either as a day member or a regular member. The waivers are important and needed but the insurers also require that all runners be members. It shouldn't be a real pain but some clubs may have thousands of waivers printed and these may not be able to be used. They can produce a page similar to what Delyn showed in a previous post to solve the problem and, therefore, not need to change their waiver. This issue is that using that system, non-OUSA people have to sign two things.

The reality is that the only "insured" were members of OUSA. This was a communication problem associated with USOF thinking that members was the big tent of all those running but the insurers thinking it was just USOF members. Since the initial policy was signed, we are now OUSA (instead of USOF) but the new carrier just carried on the old coverage, making it identical to the one that preceded it. The coverage was NOT what we thought it was. Mistakes were made. The good news is that we never used it with 10s of thousands of starts. The policy is a standard "sports" policy, like a golf club with its members or whatever and the standard says that only members are insured. This has been a problem that was unknown until two weeks ago. It was only by someone reading the fine print in dealing with another issue that this problem was discovered. Our insurance policy does require the waivers but it also has/does require that all the insured are members. The fact that waivers have been the norm for clubs goes back awhile and I don't know the history.

The requirement of a waiver should be more prominently displayed but I don't know of any club that doesn't use one. The length of time to retain the waivers has been discussed, here, on AP. Basically, they need to be retained until there is no thought that anyone who signed them will decide to sue because of something that happened at the meet. Two years seemed to be the agreed on time frame based on input from a lawyer although the lawyer didn't know the laws in all states.

1) Were all participants--members and non-members of OUSA alike--covered by OUSA's insurance in the past or not? Answer: The reality is that they were not unless they were OUSA members. We were lucky.
2) Is there a requirement that waivers must be obtained from all participants, as well as a requirement for all participants to have at least day-of-race membership in OUSA? Answer: This has, from what I know, been general policy of clubs and the standard waiver forms have been circulated and used.
3) What is the record keeping requirement for same, as stipulated by the terms of the insurance policy? Answer: The OUSA member and waiver should be kept for two years but, as has been stated, most people will keep them longer because they will forget to throw them out at exactly two years. There is actually no time stipulated by the insurance policy but because the membership is related to insurance and the possibility of liability or accident, they should be kept for an appropriate amount of time, deemed to be two years.

people who run and participants - is this the same set of people? Just to be complete - what about the non OUSA member who doesn't run and breaks their leg picking up/setting out controls?

Here's a tip I learned recently in my incredibly boring (but mandatory) Records Information Management training at work: put 'em in a box or file-folder labelled with a purge date that's two years out from whatever date they're collected. Review and toss periodically.

Hey, that training wasn't so useless after all...

people who run and participants - is this the same set of people? Just to be complete - what about the non OUSA member who doesn't run and breaks their leg picking up/setting out controls?

What about spectators who are neither running, or volunteering?
Is the insurance intended to cover the general liability of the event, or just cover the club against claims from the member participants?

Is this really a standard sports policy? I don't recall having to become a member (for the day) of the running club hosting the last road race I ran.

Can we still stipulate that the landowner is "also insured" for each of our events? I don't think our landowners would be willing to sign anything as a condition of our use of their property.

If you guys think this is complicated, just think about what the insurance situation is like for hang gliding.

What happens for all the fees for uninsured orienteers since 2007...will OUSA get some of that money back from the insurance company? Could be a nice windfall! Or was it a fixed fee?

HVO has its waiver printed on registration cards. We have thousands of them -- in white, yellow, orange, brown, green, red and blue. It looks like we will have the 2-signature system...

Question: The form used the past two weekends (including by OCIN at the Flying Pig), in addition to printed name and signature, required address, phone number, hosting club and event date(s). Is it now correct to say that only the printed name and signature are required? Is there any need to relate the guest membership form names with the names and information provided on separate registration forms?

Also, I agree with mystery-APer Delyn: For any non-OUSA member attending more than one O-event, "one-time" is not correct; for them it could be many times. "One-time" should be changed to "temporary".

Surely just make it a condition that anyone running an OUSA club run event gets yearly benefit-free membership, and being listed in the results is a record of this.

Club websites could include a moderately prominent message to the effect that by participating, you become a member.

But again, as ed-des says, this is just organiser and landowner liability, right? And if you want to get organiser liability coverage, you need to be an OUSA member (which seems reasonable). Making others become OUSA members... what is the motivation for that? Less likely to sue? ??

Club workers should be covered by the club liability insurance. The wording of the membership was from the insurer so we are just doing what we have been told. The revision to the policy is costing us more money so we won't get a rebate (and could be the other way around).
There presently is a board committee working on how to move forward from this point. There are a number of options that will be discussed. The idea is to have a plan ready to present to the board meeting in May so that if there needs to be a change in the by-laws that can be done at Tahoe in July.

I don't get it. I read the waiver and it sounds like the insurance wouldn't cover anything under any circumstance. Am I missing something?

The new waiver refers to 'the dates stated below' as the period for temporary membership, but does not have a place for that to be filled in. Signature date need not be event date, particularly but not only if the meet lasts multiple days. There should be a 'Date(s)' field next to the event name field.

As a less important point, points 6 and 7 do not complete the sentence in the preamble the way points 1-5 do. My inner proofreader cringed.

Wasn't there a big dust-up about the USOF insurance policy a few years ago? Our premium was nearly doubling or something like that. There was talk of massively increasing sanctioning fees to cover it, but then we were told it was sorted and our premiums were back to normal. Is that when this issue of non-member participants cropped up? That is, did we get the big discount by dropping coverage of non-members?

That was separate and part of the Marsh & McLennan insurance scandal, whereby insurance brokers instead of finding the best possible deals for their clients, were doing anything but, in return for fees/kickbacks from insurers with higher priced policies.

I agree with @feet. Legalities should be grammatically correct, even accounting for their twisted English constructions. The first point completes 2-5. "Point 1" should be unnumbered and 2-5 should be 1-4. Indentation might be used to distinguish the completed sentences from the final two statements (6 & 7).

I think this was more recent than that Marsh & McLennan scandal. Are you referring to their 2004 incident (I didn't know, just googled them)? The increase/decrease I was thinking of was just a couple of years ago.

If legalities were required to be grammically correct, the world would grind to a halt. In my limited experience, the legal system is remarkably insensitive to grammatical niceties.

A note of advice to clubs and event directors: do not skimp on your insurance or cut corners on your record keeping.
It is rare that someone is injured while orienteering but as you saw recently it does happen.
Clubs need not be in any way negligent for a suit to happen. If someone is injured and has no other way to pay the medical costs a lawsuit is the only way to get those expenses covered. Even if the injured has insurance the covering company may insist on action against the parties responsible for the event in an attempt to recover their costs. If Orienteering's insurance can't or won't cover it then they will go after the 'deepest pocket' - for instance the state or county park. Then you will see those bodies booting out orienteering big time.
Make sure your ass is covered.
As to day memberships that has been standard operating procedure in triathlons forever. In Ontario when I was competing the day membership fee was $5 and we were told that all went to insurance. It is not worth fighting it. Accept it. Your customers will accept it, too, if for nothing else than the knowledge that if something goes wrong for them they will have a chance at some help with the medical bills.

A few years ago, one company was going to raise our rates and we switched to another with the same policies written. The problem was associated with the definitions and an understanding of our organization. Because the insurer's model of insurance is to have all members of sporting groups "members", we need to be members. The present system covers OUSA and member clubs as long as everyone who runs "is a member". Presently, we are working on setting up a system for dealing with this "membership" issue and it will be discussed at the upcoming board meeting. Before that meeting, information will be sent out on the boardnet to board members about what will be discussed. (The idea is to have the board aware of the issues so solutions can be discussed rather than just learning what the issues are.) Non-board members can see these discussions although they don't have permission to post. Input can be made directly to a member of the board or can be sent to me. At this time, we don't have firm things to be discussed but will by the first of May at the very latest. Input from members of OUSA will be important as we move forward.

non-board members can see these discussions

You do need to subscribe to the group to see them; do so here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/USOF-bod/

I still fail to understand how signing a piece of paper that is never transmitted to the organization makes one a member, "an individual who belongs". Do you belong somewhere that doesn't know you exist? Would that stand up in court? I urge Orienteering USA to research the matter better.

T/D I think you are right that signing the paper does not qualify one for membership. However paying the entry surcharge and signing the paper should be good enough but again you are right that extra research is warranted and I'm sure is in progress.

Well, my point is, it seems that the accepting organization should somehow acknowledge the application for membership in order for the membership to be valid. Not necessary through a surcharge, but it seems that at least the applications should be transmitted to Orienteering USA in some form or fashion (whether it then enters the data into some kind of database is a secondary question).

The signing of the piece of paper seems a bit strange but the insurer says that it is fine and the method, if approved by them, although it seems a bit weird, works.
Going forward, the board will be discussing changes to the bylaws so that this is not needed but the way the bylaws are written, this is the only way that we can do it. OUSA is paying more in insurance because there are more "members" and the numbers that were worked out were agreed to by the insurance people. "Standing up in court" is not really the issue here. In this case, it is a solution to the problem suggested by the insurer so we are just doing their bidding. If the insurance agency is suggesting something that is improper, then their own insurance would have to cover it. The application for membership is retained with the waiver and can be accessed from the clubs if needed.

But there does need to be something in OUSA bylaws saying such applications are accepted automagically.

That is the intention of the bylaws changes that will be put forward.

If it didn't strike me as such an administrative nightmare, I might well conclude we actually should have a local event registration fee surcharge for people who aren't annual or life members of OUSA. Presumably, at the margins, some number of people would decide it made sense for them to become annual members and get the magazine and A meet discounts rather than just buying insurance coverage for the day.

This would tie very well with local meet online registration on OUSA site, collecting most info, waivers, and extra fees right there.