Physician Disability: Expenses Cause Medical Practice Closures
Independent medical practices, including primary care physicians, mental health clinics, and many others, are shutting their doors at unprecedented levels. As a physician, it is important to protect your livelihood not only with business insurance for your practice, but physician disability insurance as well. Merritt Hawkins, a physicians recruitment firm, found that requests for doctors to join a solo practice as a partner or to begin a solo practice in an area dropped this past year to 2% of search assignments—down from 42% in 2004. 
Declining income due to revised state and federal payment schedules has combined with increased costs of doing business to make independent medical practices increasingly untenable financially. Reporting requirements, new online medical health records mandates, upcoming pressures from the accountable care organization model, and ongoing increases in medical malpractice insurance are only part of the overhead expenses independent doctors face.
The idea of paying on these costs plus the standard expenses of running your practice—property, utility, insurance and other maintenance bills—without income is utterly insane. But that is just what you would face if you became temporarily disabled due to an injury or illness.
Alternative Sources of Income
If you suffer a temporary disability but you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you’ll probably want to keep your practice open. If you have a physicians disability insurance policy with overhead expense coverage, you can survive the downtime.
Business overhead insurance covers your ongoing business overhead expenses if you become disabled. It can be used for rent or mortgage, employee salary and benefits, utilities, taxes, insurance, and any other regular expenses your practice faces. Some policies also cover the salary of a temporary employee hired to cover your duties while you are out on disability. The business overhead expense disability policy responds in addition to your personal disability insurance, which provides a stream of income to you personally to cover your own needs.
With all the pressures on independent doctors offices these days, it’s best to eliminate those that you can. To buy disability insurance or get a physician disability insurance quote, contact an advisor who specializes in the field.
Source: Chicagoist & AMA