72 Hours Checklist

People come before property. Start by confirming that all patients, staff, and visitors are safe and accounted for, and follow your facility's emergency and evacuation procedures. If there is active fire, flooding, gas, structural instability, or electrical danger, evacuate the affected area and call emergency services. Do not re-enter until it is safe.

Once people are safe, several things in that first hour can meaningfully protect your eventual insurance recovery:

Stop the loss from spreading, safely. Your policy almost certainly requires you to mitigate — to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage. If it is safe to do so, shut off water supplies, cover open areas, secure the premises. Never put a person at risk to protect property.

Document before cleanup begins. Photograph and video the damage before anyone moves, covers, or removes anything. Capture wide shots and close-ups, including model and serial plates on equipment. This visual record — made before cleanup — is among the most valuable evidence you can have.

Protect your cold chain. If refrigeration has failed, move pharmaceuticals, vaccines, biologics, and lab specimens to functioning units immediately. Record the time the interruption began; that timestamp is essential for substantiating the loss.

Do not discard anything yet. Damaged equipment, inventory, and supplies are evidence of your claim. Setting them aside is very different from throwing them away.

Restrict access. Limit entry to damaged areas to authorized personnel to prevent further injury, theft, and contamination.

Our First 72 Hours: Post-Loss Action Checklist above walks you through every step across the full 72-hour window — you can check items off and export the list as a PDF for your on-site team.

If you want experienced guidance from professionals who work exclusively for policyholders, GGG/AI's team of licensed public adjusters, forensic accountants, and building estimators has helped hospitals and medical facilities through property losses since 1941.

No — and waiting is one of the most costly mistakes medical facilities make in the early window.

The insurer's adjuster may not arrive for several days. In that time you have real obligations that do not wait, and real opportunities to protect your recovery that can slip away if you're not moving.

Your duty to mitigate starts immediately. Most policies require you to take reasonable steps to prevent additional damage. If you don't, the insurer may argue that the extended or worsened damage is partly your responsibility. This means shutting off water, tarping a roof, boarding up openings, securing the property.

Report promptly. You are likely required to give the insurer prompt written notice of the loss. Do not wait until the adjuster contacts you — report by email or through the carrier's portal as soon as possible and keep a record of it.

Document independently. Do not wait for the insurer's documentation to be the record of what happened. Take your own photographs and video, start your own damage inventory, and keep your own log of every call and action. You do not want the only account of the loss to be someone else's.

Protect time-sensitive assets. Cold-chain losses, evidence of contamination, and the condition of damaged equipment are all things that deteriorate or change fast. Documenting them now preserves your ability to substantiate them later.

What you should not do before the adjuster arrives: discard or replace damaged property. Leave items in place where it is safe to do so.

No. The insurance company's adjuster is employed by or retained by the insurer. Their job is to investigate and evaluate the claim on the insurer's behalf. Their professional obligation runs to their employer — not to you.

This is not a claim that adjusters are dishonest. Many are thorough and professional. But working for the insurer and working for you are two different things. They may not proactively identify coverage you didn't ask about. They may interpret ambiguous policy language in the insurer's favor. They may use valuation methods for damaged equipment that produce a lower figure than your actual replacement cost. They are not required to explain the claim in a way that maximizes your recovery.

The same applies to the "independent" building consultants, engineers, and contractors the insurer brings to the site: they are retained and directed by the insurance company.

One of the questions on the GGG/AI page captures this precisely: do those consultants work for the policyholder, or for the insurance company? The answer matters.

You have the right to your own representation. A licensed public adjuster works exclusively for you — reviewing the same loss, reading the same policy, and advocating for your full recovery. You do not have to enter the claims process with only the insurer's expert in the room.

Not yet — and this is one of the most expensive early mistakes medical facilities make.

Damaged equipment, fixtures, inventory, and supplies are physical evidence of your loss. Disposing of them before they are inspected and properly documented can directly reduce what you recover. In some cases, insurers will argue that an undocumented loss is an unsubstantiated one.

The general rule is to set things aside where it is safe to do so, photograph and log them in detail (make, model, serial number, apparent damage, location), and wait for your own assessment and the insurer's inspection before disposing of anything.

The exception is genuine health or safety hazards. If damaged materials are creating an active biohazard, contamination risk, or injury risk that cannot be managed otherwise, handle them safely — but document extensively before you do. Photograph, video, take written notes about what was present and why removal was necessary.

High-value specialty equipment deserves particular attention. MRI machines, surgical robots, imaging systems, sterile-processing equipment, and laboratory instruments involve significant valuation questions: is the item repairable? If repairable, what does that mean for the claim value? Is a repaired high-value piece of medical equipment truly restored to its pre-loss condition and useful life? These questions can only be resolved if the equipment still exists to be assessed.

Do not let the answer to a major valuation question be determined by the fact that the item was discarded before anyone looked at it.

Cold-chain losses are common in power-outage and equipment-failure events, and they are regularly undervalued or missed entirely. Here is what to know.

Coverage. Many commercial property policies cover pharmaceutical and biological inventory as part of the personal property or stock coverage. Some have specific sub-limits for refrigerated goods or spoilage; others cover the full replacement value of the inventory. You need to read your actual policy language, not the summary, to understand what applies.

Documentation is everything. The insurer will want to know when the cold chain was broken (start time and date), for how long, what temperatures were reached, what specific products were lost, and what each was worth. If you do not capture the time and temperature of the interruption at the time it happens, you are reconstructing it later from memory — which is harder and less persuasive.

In the moment:

• Record the time the power or refrigeration unit failed.
• If you have digital temperature monitoring systems or data loggers, preserve and export the logs immediately.
• Photograph the contents of affected units before removing or consolidating anything.
• Note what was successfully moved to backup refrigeration, when, and what could not be salvaged.
• Do not discard spoiled product until it has been documented — but if it is a biohazard, document thoroughly first and handle it safely according to your facility's protocols.

Valuation. Pharmaceutical inventories can be large and specialized. Vaccines in particular can be expensive in quantity. High-value biologics and specialty medications may have replacement costs that are not obvious. Build the inventory list methodically, with quantities and unit costs, rather than estimating.

A well-documented cold-chain loss is a real, recoverable part of a property claim. An undocumented one is an argument.

Learn more about business interruption coverage for commercial properties — sometimes called business income coverage — which is designed to replace the revenue your facility would have earned had the damage not occurred, for the period required to restore operations. For medical facilities, this is often one of the largest and most actively contested parts of a claim.

What it typically covers. Lost net income during the restoration period, plus continuing fixed operating expenses — payroll, rent or lease payments, debt service, utilities — that continue even though the facility cannot operate normally. Many policies also cover "extra expense": the additional costs you incur to keep operating or speed up restoration, such as renting temporary space, leasing equipment, paying overtime for an expedited construction schedule, or deploying a portable operating room.

What it typically does not cover. Revenue that is speculative or unrelated to the damage; losses that fall within the waiting period (many policies have a 72-hour deductible before BI coverage activates); losses that extend beyond the "period of restoration" as defined in the policy.

Start tracking from day one. BI claims are reconstructed from records, and records are hardest to create after the fact.

• Establish your baseline: revenue per day or per week, using the same period from the prior year as the comparison.
• Log procedures, surgeries, appointments, and admissions that were canceled or diverted, and to where.
• Track patient-volume disruption over time so you can show the arc of lost activity.
• Record every fixed expense continuing during the shutdown: payroll for retained staff, lease payments, loan payments, insurance premiums.
• Log every extra expense incurred to maintain any level of operations, kept separately from normal accounts payable.

A forensic accountant experienced in insurance claims will ultimately help structure the BI calculation and present it to the insurer. But they work from the raw data — which has to exist before they can use it.

Coinsurance is a policy provision that can significantly reduce your claim recovery, and many policyholders don't know it applies to them until they are in the middle of a claim.

How it works. A coinsurance clause requires you to carry insurance coverage equal to a specified percentage of your property's total replacement cost — commonly 80%, 90%, or 100%. If the coverage you carry at the time of loss is less than that required percentage, you are treated as a co-insurer on the loss, and the insurer pays only a proportionate share.

An example. Your facility has a replacement cost of $10 million. Your policy has an 80% coinsurance requirement, meaning you are required to carry $8 million in coverage. You actually carry $6 million. You suffer a $2 million loss. The insurer calculates your recovery as ($6M ÷ $8M) × $2M = $1.5M. You receive $1.5 million on a $2 million loss — a 25% penalty — even though the loss is entirely within your coverage limit.

Why this is a particular risk for medical facilities. Property values change over time — equipment upgrades, facility renovations, inflation in construction and equipment costs. If your property coverage was set years ago and has not been updated to reflect current replacement costs, a coinsurance gap can open without anyone noticing, and it only becomes visible at claim time.

If you are in a loss now. Before agreeing to any settlement, understand whether your policy has a coinsurance provision and whether you were carrying the required amount. This is one of the policy provisions a licensed public adjuster or your insurance broker should review on your behalf before settlement discussions conclude.

Possibly — and this is one of the most frequently missed sources of coverage in medical facility property claims.

The problem. When a building that was constructed or last renovated years ago is damaged and must be repaired, local building codes require that the repairs bring the affected areas up to current standards. For medical facilities, that can mean mandatory ventilation and infection-control upgrades, updated electrical systems for modern equipment, ADA accessibility improvements, seismic retrofits, or upgraded fire suppression systems — all required simply because the repair triggered a code review. These upgrades cost money, and they were not in the pre-loss building.

A standard property policy typically covers restoration to the pre-loss condition — not the additional cost of making the repairs comply with current code. If you have only a standard policy, you may be responsible for the gap.

The relevant coverage. "Ordinance or Law" coverage (also written as "Law and Ordinance") is an endorsement that, when present, typically covers:

• The increased cost of construction to meet current code requirements.
• The cost of demolishing undamaged portions of the building that cannot legally be used or retained without bringing them up to code.
• The loss in value of the undamaged portion that must be demolished.

For medical facilities specifically. The code-upgrade costs can be very large: a heating and ventilation upgrade to meet current infection-control standards, an electrical infrastructure upgrade for imaging equipment, a comprehensive ADA retrofit. These are real costs that belong in your claim if your policy provides for them.

What to do. Check whether your policy has an Ordinance or Law endorsement, note its coverage limit, and flag any construction-triggered upgrades to your adjuster and your contractor as soon as they are identified. This is coverage that can easily be missed if nobody looks for it.

If you want to understand what a licensed public adjuster does and how the process works, the short answer is: a public adjuster represents the policyholder — not the insurance company — through the entire claims process.

What they do. They read your policy to identify all applicable coverage, including endorsements and provisions you may not have been aware of. They inspect and document the loss independently on your behalf. They prepare and present the claim — the scope of damage, the supporting evidence, the business-interruption calculation — in the format and with the detail that supports the fullest recovery. They negotiate directly with the insurer's adjuster and representatives. They manage the timeline, the correspondence, and the claim strategy, so that you can focus on your facility and your patients rather than the claims process.

Do you need one? There is no legal requirement. But consider the context: the insurer's adjuster is a trained professional who handles claims daily, working in the insurer's interest. If your loss is significant — and medical facility losses typically are — the gap in claims expertise between you and the insurer is real. A public adjuster fills that gap on your side.

Public adjusters are typically compensated as a percentage of the settlement. That fee deserves scrutiny, as any professional fee does. It is also worth noting that the additional recovery an experienced PA secures frequently exceeds the fee by a meaningful margin. Clients of GGG/AI have described settlements that were double what the insurer initially offered.

For medical facility claims specifically. Ask any public adjuster you evaluate whether they have direct experience with healthcare property claims: cold-chain and pharmaceutical losses, high-value specialty equipment, business-interruption calculation for clinical revenue streams, code-upgrade coverage, and the regulatory environment of licensed medical facilities. These are genuinely different from commercial real estate, and experience in the specific context matters.

Your insurance policy imposes specific duties on you after a loss, and failing to meet them can limit — or in serious cases jeopardize — your recovery. These vary by policy, so read your own "Duties After Loss" section carefully, but the most common obligations include the following.

Prompt written notice. You are typically required to report the loss to your insurer promptly, in writing. What "promptly" means is not always defined precisely, but delay creates problems — the insurer may argue that late notice harmed its ability to investigate. Report as soon as reasonably possible after the event, by email or through the carrier's portal, and keep a record.

Mitigation. You are required to take reasonable steps to prevent additional damage after the initial event. Board up, tarp, shut off utilities — whatever is appropriate to your situation and safe for your staff. Failing to mitigate can give the insurer grounds to argue that some portion of the loss is attributable to your inaction.

Cooperation with the insurer's investigation. You are required to allow the insurer's adjuster access for inspection, to provide relevant records, and to answer questions reasonably. This does not mean giving up your own rights or documentation. It means you cannot obstruct the process. Your independent assessment and your own records are entirely appropriate to have and use.

Proof of loss. Most policies require you to submit a formal Proof of Loss — a sworn statement of the amount you are claiming — within a specified period, commonly 60 or 90 days. Extensions are often available, but you need to request them. Missing a Proof of Loss deadline without an extension can give the insurer grounds to contest the claim on procedural grounds entirely separate from the merits of the loss.

Protecting and preserving property. You are generally required to protect damaged property from further loss, and to make records and damaged items available for inspection. This is the basis for the instruction not to discard damaged equipment before it has been documented and assessed.

Policy deadlines beyond notice. Many policies also have a suit-limitation clause — a deadline by which you must bring any legal action related to the claim. This is separate from the notice and proof-of-loss deadlines. An experienced public adjuster or a coverage attorney can help you map all relevant deadlines so nothing expires unnoticed.

The short version: report promptly, document everything, mitigate safely, cooperate while protecting your own interests, and know your deadlines. For a fuller picture of how the commercial claims process works — from the first notice of loss through negotiation and settlement — see our overview of the claims process.