Disability Insurance: The Missing Link In A Physician's Financial Plan

As a physician and a business owner, you have spreadsheets, balance sheets, profit and loss statements, tax filings, and an endless array of documents available to tell you daily how much money it takes to keep your practice going. You’re on top of it, and no doubt take great pride in what you’re building. That’s one of the best reasons for protecting it against financial loss should you, another physician, or a key member of your practice suffer a disabling event or disease.

The expenses reflected on all those financial documents don't stop if a disability, yours or that of another key employee, should cause the business's income to be reduced or stopped all together for an extended period of time.

A good business plan includes managing the risk of any potential threats to the practice. The threat of a disability during your working years is real and disability insurance protection needs to be part of your business plan.

There are several kinds of disability insurance to consider in order to protect your business:

1. Individual Disability Income Insurance for personal protection.

2. Group Disability Income Insurance to protect your employees and make it easier to recruit additional quality physicians and employees.

3. Disability Overhead Expense Insurance provides a monthly benefit geared toward covering the business's fixed overhead expenses.

4. Disability Buy-Out Insurance makes funds available to the business to help buy out a disabled owner.

5. Key Person Disability insurance makes payments to the business in the event a key person is disabled.

Your goal is to meet all relevant business needs, but to avoid overlapping benefits. It is important to keep your business running and healthy, even if you are not. Since some disabilities are temporary, what you want is time.

Disability Insurance offers you time to heal, time to make good decisions and time for your business to recover, too.

Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, WI (NM) (life and disability insurance, annuities) and its subsidiaries. Andrew Bernstein and Philip Clark, Insurance Agents of NM.