"Beauty" or "medical"? The Department of Health draws a clear line
Many beauty salons and medical aesthetic centres offer injections, laser treatments, or skin resurfacing. The Department of Health draws a clear distinction between "medical procedures" and "beauty services" — certain procedures (for example, injections involving prescription-only substances, or treatments using medical-grade equipment) may, by law, only be performed by a registered medical practitioner or registered dentist. Having an unregistered beautician perform them constitutes unauthorised practice of medicine. Which category your treatments fall into directly determines which type of insurance you actually need.
If your premises operates as a clinic or day procedure centre, you should also be aware of the Private Healthcare Facilities Ordinance (Cap. 633) — any hospital, day procedure centre, or clinic not managed by the Government or the Hospital Authority is regulated under this Ordinance. Clinic licence applications and small practice clinic exemption applications have been accepted since October 2025. If you're unsure whether your centre needs a licence, check the Office for Regulation of Private Healthcare Facilities (ORPHF) website directly.
Public liability covers "accidents" — not necessarily "the treatment itself going wrong"
Many owners assume that once they've bought public liability insurance, they're fully covered. Public liability insurance mainly protects against general accidents on your premises — a customer slipping and falling, or being struck by falling stock. But harm caused by the treatment itself — an allergic reaction after an injection, a scar left by a laser procedure — is often excluded from standard public liability policies as a claim "arising from professional services / treatment".
The coverage gap: when the treatment goes wrong, public liability may not respond
Public liability insurance covers "premises risk". Medical malpractice insurance (professional indemnity insurance) covers "treatment risk" — claims arising from medical negligence or a professional error in judgment. These are two distinct exposures, and one policy cannot substitute for the other. Confirm exactly which risk each policy actually covers before you buy.
The doctor has their own indemnity insurance — does that mean the salon is covered too?
Under the Medical Council of Hong Kong's Code of Professional Conduct for the Guidance of Registered Medical Practitioners, Section 16.1: "Professional indemnity insurance provides protection to the patient as well as the doctor against whom medical negligence claims are made... Although it is not a mandatory requirement, a doctor should seriously assess the risks of his practice, his personal ability to pay the potential compensation awards and the legal costs of defending the claims, and obtain proper insurance coverage where appropriate." In other words, there's no legal requirement for a doctor to carry this insurance — the Code only asks doctors to assess their own risk and consider it.
Even where a doctor does carry indemnity insurance, that policy typically protects the doctor personally. If your aesthetic centre operates as a separate company, the liability tied to the beauticians you employ, the equipment you use, and the products you administer may not automatically fall under the doctor's personal indemnity policy — that's a separate exposure your business needs to handle in its own right.
Three things medical aesthetic / beauty business owners should check
- Classify your procedures — for every treatment you offer, work out which count as "beauty" and which cross into the legal definition of a "medical procedure" (requiring a registered doctor or dentist). Knowing this tells you which part of your business carries which risk.
- The treating doctor's own indemnity cover — does the doctor or technician performing the treatment carry professional indemnity insurance, and does that cover extend only to them personally, or to your centre as well?
- Your business's own standalone cover — premises accident risk, equipment/product liability, and errors by non-medical staff. Don't assume the doctor's personal indemnity policy already covers all of this; group medical for your staff is another benefit owners commonly overlook.
Not sure whether there's a gap in your business's current cover? Use our coverage check for a two-minute assessment, or reach out and we'll go through it with you for free.