Marc Whitehead & Associates represents disabled physician assistants nationwide in cases where the insurance company wrongfully denied their disability insurance benefits.
While PAs and other medical professions might not be considered dangerous occupations, even a minor impairment can mean a dramatic loss of income, or become a career-disrupting disability. Many PAs have additional training in medical specialties, in areas such as anesthesiology, surgery and urgent care, putting the disability policy in the “high premium” category.
PAs earn high salaries, and so are often targeted by insurance carriers as likely purchasers of disability insurance protection. Yet when the time comes to honor your claim, you find that the insurer has denied the award of benefits, or uses delay tactics to stonewall your claim, at a time when you need benefits the most.
How the Type of Insurance Policy affects Physician Assistants Disability Claim for Benefits
Insurance companies market disability insurance policies to PAs that range from a true own occupation policy – that protects you in your own occupation, even if you can earn an income doing something else – to a modified version of own occupation, or regular occupation.
Depending on the policy wording, and whether you have individual disability insurance (IDI) or group disability insurance, the protections you receive vary tremendously. Your policy may also be under a professional association group disability plan.
Physician assistants pay monthly premiums for IDI as crucial income protection. If injury or illness stops them from performing the material and substantial duties of their own occupation as a PA, the coverage should provide substantial income replacement.
Group disability benefit plans generally offer a much more restrictive coverage, where a modified own-occupation coverage lasts for about two years, then the coverage shifts to where you can be found able to return to work in “any occupation” in the national economy.
Common tactics used to deny or underpay physician assistants’ disability benefits include
- Claiming your medical records do not substantiate your disability according to the policy definition of “disabled”
- Misrepresenting or ignoring what your treating physician stated
- Saying they find you no longer disabled according to the policy
- Saying their vocational evaluation shows that your limitations do not prevent you from performing the duties of your own occupation
- Claiming your physical limitations do not prevent you from performing the duties of any occupation
Attorneys Handling Medical Professionals’ Disability Insurance Claims
During the vocational review of physician assistants disability claim, insurers may turn to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) or O*Net databases for the U.S. Dept. of Labor’s general vocational descriptions for physician assistants.
The DOT defines Physician Assistant as Very Skilled work, with a physical strength rating as Light (requiring standing from six to eight hours per day, lifting 20 pounds occasionally and ten pounds frequently.) Insurers may use these occupational descriptions to their benefit, because they often do not describe the actual extent of duties routinely performed by the PA.
Marc Whitehead & Associates are among the few law firms nationwide who manage these kinds of cases every day. We represent disability claims for medical professionals against the nation’s largest and most litigious insurance companies.
In an initial case evaluation, we will review your situation and evaluate the legitimacy of the denial, at absolutely no charge or obligation to you.
By asking for our evaluation of your case, you can decide if taking legal action is in your best interest. Remember, timing may be critical to your case.