You've limited your profession to the specialized duties of a surgical specialist and therefore should be sure that your disability insurance policy is equally as specialized. Over the past decade, the disability insurance market place has changed continuously for physicians and the competition has continued to grow. Understanding the importance of contractual provisions available to surgeons today has become more important than ever before.
Protecting Your Medical Specialty
Although you've likely heard the terms "own-occupation" and "medical specialty specific" before, it is important that surgeons understand the true value behind this definition of total disability. The pure own-occupation definition of disability defines total disability as the inability to perform the material duties of your occupation, regardless of whether you are able to work in a different capacity. With a large number of insurance carriers offering disability insurance to physicians, it is imperative that you are capable of differentiating a pure own-occupation policy from one that is marketed as such, but is not actually.
A pure own-occupation disability insurance policy must consider you to be totally disabled when unable to perform the material duties of your occupation as a surgeon, REGARDLESS of whether you are working in a different capacity. It is this specialized wording that allows a surgeon to continue receiving disability benefits while working in a different medical specialty or profession. If the policy includes any additional language that restricts you from working while collecting disability benefits it is considered less than optimal.
Having the most favorable definition of total disability is important for any professional, but especially for surgeons.Surgical Specialists Lawrenceville There are considerably more things that can prevent a surgeon from performing surgery than can prevent many other professionals from doing their job. For this reason, it makes sense to select the policy that is most comprehensive and tailored to your specialized duties.
Obtaining Coverage During Residency
Surgery residents can take advantage of Special Limit Programs available through most of the major insurance carriers to obtain disability insurance while still in residency. These programs allow young surgeons to lock in lower premiums for the life of the policy and take advantage of their good health. Although you will likely want to increase the monthly benefits as an attending, surgery residents can obtain $4,000-$7,500 of monthly benefit, depending on their current year of training and without requiring financial documentation.
Surgery residents should work with a financial professional who understands disability insurance well in order to ensure the appropriate provisions and optional policy riders are included.
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