Our client – a 61 year old family practice doctor from Massachusetts – came to us at the outset of her claim to navigate the complexities of the disability insurance claim process. She had three policies with different insurance companies, two that were private policies and one through her employer. Together, these policies represented $15,000 in monthly income and she needed to make sure they were protected.
As a family practice doctor, her job requirements were diverse. On a daily basis, she was performing significant patient care responsibilities, including various tests and examinations as well as direct patient care. She needed to have and access a vast spectrum of knowledge of medical conditions, as her patient population often came to her with assorted and often vague complaints.
Over the course of thirty years, she had been skilled at piecing together the medical puzzles to determine what her patients were suffering from and how to best treat them. But as her cognitive issues became more pervasive, she was losing the innate ability to address patient challenges. She was also losing confidence in her ability to effectively diagnose and effectuate patient care. This impacted consistent decision making, her ability to analyze and extract relevant information to make the proper decision about the patient care, and overall, her patient encounters suffered.
Our work together began with our analysis of her three disability policy coverages to ensure that we could develop a uniform approach to her claim without running into any issues that would lack consistency. Her coverages had good definitions of disability, so we were able to frame her issues utilizing an approach that has worked for hundreds of Jason’s medical professional clients, who have worked with us at the claim outset, before filing a claim. We reviewed these strategic decisions and interfaced with her own medical providers to develop support and develop other strategies.
In addition to her providers’ support, we leveraged the results of cognitive testing and developed additional and powerful support from an established expert to address how these cognitive impairments caused her to become unable to perform her occupational duties on a regular, reliable, and sustained basis.
Bringing together objective proof of impairments with occupational requirements is a tried and true approach that has worked well in the more than two dozen years Disability Attorney Jason Newfield has secured disability insurance claims for his clients.
After developing the support and submitting the claim materials – as is often the case – the insurance companies sought to obtain further information through direct insured interviews. Each insurer sought different items, but all sought to speak directly with the doctor. We don’t permit this for our clients, as it presents many potential pitfalls for claims.
Jason worked with her during this process, both preparing the issues in advance and attending the interviews to protect the nature of the questioning, permitting relevant inquiries only.
Shortly after the interviews, all three of her claims were accepted. She didn’t have to worry about putting her patients at risk and could focus on her health instead.