About ARG


Founded in 1976 as a research-oriented consulting firm, ARG is expert in the highly specialized field of actuarial analyses related to medical professional liability.

History

Actuarial Research Group, Inc., was founded in 1976 as a research-oriented consulting firm specializing in statistical and insurance problems related primarily to medical professional liability. Most of our work has focused on healthcare systems, but we have also done work for a variety of physician groups, including a large teaching program in the Texas Medical Center in Houston. Over the years we have expanded into other areas, including preparation of funding and reserve evaluations for general liability, workers’ compensation, and unemployment compensation programs. In addition, we evaluate medical payment reserves for healthcare plans, including a large plan based in Houston.

In the capacity of actuarial consultants, we have performed medical malpractice reserve evaluations and self-insurance studies for healthcare systems in 19 states including California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas, as well as Washington, D.C. In addition to evaluations of domestic self-insurers, we provide reserve opinions for various offshore captive insurance companies.

Although we can and do perform traditional actuarial analyses based on triangulations and loss developments, we are particularly interested in modeling the factors that determine ultimate payouts - frequency, severity, expenses, time to settlement - at the individual healthcare system level. This approach often provides insights into a system's loss-generating process that cannot be seen from analysis of the system's aggregate loss experience. It also permits more informative comparisons of one system's loss history to that of another system or to that of other healthcare providers in general.

Research

As part of our research efforts, we actively pursue communications with persons in industry and academia who have related interests. Collectively, the principals in Actuarial Research Group have published scholarly papers dealing with various facets of medical malpractice insurance in the Journal of Risk and Insurance, CPCU Annals, and the Duke Law Journal.

We have also presented papers relating to medical malpractice to the Risk Theory Society and to the annual meeting of the American Risk and Insurance Association. In addition, we have singly or jointly published papers relating to other areas of insurance and/or applied statistics in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and the International Statistical Review.

One of our principals has chaired several doctoral dissertations focusing on medical malpractice issues, including one that proposes a new measure of exposure for hospital professional liability, a second that develops a new method of analyzing triangulations for actuarial projection of claim frequencies, and a third that addresses the statistical analysis and modeling of claim frequencies.

Clients

We are presently serving as consulting actuaries to various self-insured healthcare providers, including individual hospitals, multi-hospital systems, physician groups, and long-term-care facilities. These providers vary geographically from California to Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas. Several of these clients have formed captive insurance companies, typically offshore, for which we have prepared feasibility studies and pro forma financial projections.

In terms of clients other than healthcare providers, we performed a closed-claim study for the Texas Hospital Association and subsequently offered testimony to a Texas Senate committee as it considered a tort reform bill that ultimately was signed into law in June 2003. We also participated in a risk analysis project related to manned spacecraft missions for NASA.

References can be provided on request.


Meet Our Team


Photo of Archer McWhorter Jr., Ph.D., Statistics and Management Science

Archer McWhorter, Jr.

Ph.D., Statistics and Management Science
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James C. Whisenant, B.A. Mathematics, M.B.A. Statistics

James C. Whisenant

M.B.A., A.C.A.S., M.A.A.A.

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Photo of Sarah Cardin, B.S., Applied Mathematics, concentration in Statistics

Sarah Cardin

A.C.A.S., M.A.A.A.

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Photo of Myron F. Steves, Ph.D. Candidate, Economics and Insurance

Myron F. Steves

Ph.D. Candidate, Economics and Insurance
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