Story at-a-glance
- Consumer-Directed Health Plans (CDHPs) are growing, offering high-deductible plans paired with health savings accounts.
- CDHPs encourage smarter healthcare spending, including increased use of preventive care.
- Busy medical professionals often skip their own preventive care, risking untreated issues that lead to disability.
- Preventive services are often covered at no cost, especially under ACA-compliant plans.
- Promoting early care can reduce disability claims, saving practices on long-term healthcare and insurance costs.
HED: Consumer-Directed Healthcare Plans
The provision of consumer-directed healthcare plans through the workplace is up. These are plans offered by employers that combine a higher deductible with a reasonable premium and, often, the ability to use untaxed earnings to pay for medical expenses through some kind of health savings account. In 2011, 58% of employers offered the plans, called CDHPs, according to an Aon Hewitt research study.
Not only are more employers offering CDHPs; more employees are using the plans to change their healthcare spending habits, a June 2012 study from Health Care Service Corp. shows. Changes included increased use of preventive care, which has direct implications for the incidence of disability claims.
Preventive Care for Medical Professionals
Busy doctors and their staffs often find the time to take care of patients better than themselves. As a result, wear-and-tear injuries go unaddressed, and personal preventive care, such as screenings and early response to symptoms, can get overlooked. That can be compounded if physicans assistants, nurses, technicians and other allied healthcare workers don’t understand the benefits of their insurance.
If your practice or medical services company provides a consumer-driven health plan to employees, make sure they know about the beneficial preventive care services the plan offers—often without a copay or deductible payment. With the advent of requirements under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies will cover more preventative care procedures, and data sharing between medical providers should enhance diagnostics and the understanding of early warning signs of problems that could evolve into a disability.
Your medical practice can save itself on costs related to employee health benefits, workers compensation and group disability benefits by emphasizing to employees the advantages of preventive care. To save on disability income protection for physicians and others in the medical services field, visit Doctor Disability or call us for more information at 866-899-7318.
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