If your clinic, center, practice or group is one of the many professional medical organizations offering both health and disability insurance to your executives, doctors and workers, you need to know about the benefits of dovetailing your health and disability coverage for employees who become sidelined by a non-work injury or illness.
When employees understand their healthcare benefits, they can better use them to avoid or deal with disabling injuries, illnesses and conditions. Addressing symptoms early can often prevent a disabling progression of the problem.
If a disability does strike, having planned for out-of-pocket costs associated with medical care during a disability can reduce the financial stress that often accompanies disability care. Employees should know their deductibles, their co-pays, their portion of prescription expenses, how much hospital time is covered and for how much, and what costs of diagnostic testing, anesthesia, operations, physical therapy, counseling and home health visits are covered. Even with good health insurance, the combined bills from providers, pharmacies and facilities can be expensive.
Having an idea of what those costs are allows the employee to work within the constraints of disability income coverage or to select the appropriate disability policy. It can also incentivize workers to save so that adequate funds are available during the disability policy’s waiting period, which is usually 90 days but can be more and is rarely less.
Long-Term Needs
The great thing about physician long-term disability insurance is that it provides an income flow long after a disabling event occurs. Even if medical insurance coverage ends—for example, for hospital or nursing care at home—disability income will still flow, helping to cover those uninsured healthcare needs.
Getting the right mix of disability and health coverage is imperative. Employees should build a mock budget that looks at potential medical costs alongside future household expenses to make sure they have enough income protection. For information on how to help employees make good combined use of their health and disability insurance policies, contact a professional advisor at https://doctordisability.com/contact-us/ or 866-899-7318.