Income protection for doctors, dentists, surgeons & nurses
Income protection can help doctors, dentists, surgeons and nurses and other medical professionals. As a medical professional, if you were to contract HIV, Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C, your income earning ability might be severely impacted. Because of the nature of your work, contracting a blood borne disease such as AIDS, Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C may require a change to your job, or may require that you cease working altogether. Either of these situations is likely to impact your income earning ability significantly.
Facing job loss and how income protection insurance can help
The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council recommends that health care professionals, including medical practitioners, dentists and nurses who are infected with a contagious blood borne disease should not be performing exposure prone procedures. These procedures include contact by the skin with sharp surgical instruments, needles, or splinters of bone or teeth in poorly visualised or confined body sites.
Therefore, if exposure prone procedures are an important income producing duty of yours, and you acquire HIV, Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C, many Australian insurers would deem you unable to perform a duty, or duties of your usual occupation. This would be subject to the satisfaction of all other applicable policy terms and conditions.
Income protection insurance for doctors, dentists & nurses explained
Robert is a surgeon. He owns an Income Protection Insurance policy. Robert contracts the blood borne disease Hepatitis C.
Under the recommendations of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, Robert would be no longer able to perform exposure prone procedures. This would include surgery which is his key income producing duty.
As a result, Roberta's income would be reduced significantly. A life insurance company may therefore deem Robert eligible for an income protection benefit payment.
If Robert were to continue to work in an alternative capacity which did not involve exposure prone procedures but resulted in a lesser income, he may be eligible for a partial benefit payment, depending on which policy he originally took out.
How Australia defines income protection insurance
The Australian income protection market commonly uses three distinct definition methodologies to assess degrees of disability. These are:
- income based - where you suffer a percentage loss of income as a result of injury or illness
- hours based - where your working hours reduce as a result of injury or illness
- duties based - where you are unable to perform important duties of your occupation as a result of injury or illness.
Each definition shows distinct advantages in its application to certain situations. Nor would any one definition be capable of providing for all claim circumstances.
Income protection insurance for doctors should not be a gamble. And the nature of illness or injury will always have a profound impact on which definition provides the fairest outcome. As a result, select insurers give you the power of choice at claim time. These life insurers may let you decide which definition is most applicable to your situation. In comparison, some life companies only apply one or two definitions.
Who has flexible income protection insurance definitions?
If you would like to find the right income protection for doctors, dentists, surgeons and nurses then contact xLife. We specialise in niche cover, get your free income protection quotes online today.
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save up to 20% on your first year's income protection premium.
April 2011
