Life and health insurers often require medical information and attending physicians’ statements in order to underwrite insurance applications. As a physician who has been in private practice and now serves as Medical Director of one of the leading life and health insurance providers in Canada, I understand that physicians’ time is at a premium. Insurance is important to your patients’ financial well-being, however, so it is in their interest that you complete these statements in a timely manner.
Insurers’ perspective
I will describe an insurer’s perspective on the information we require from physicians and explain how it is used in the underwriting process. To begin, we make every effort to protect the confidentiality of our clients’ health information. Any request for medical information includes a signed patient consent form. The consent form also permits us to share our test results with our clients’ physicians.
It is our practice to advise clients’ physicians of any important new abnormal test results we find during our underwriting process. We hope this will help physicians in the care of their patients.
Physicians’ responsibilities
As do most life and health insurers in Canada, we use a professional third party service provider to collect underwriting information, and we pay physicians a reasonable fee for the information. Physicians can choose how they provide the information: through in-office dictation, over the telephone, by filling out a form, or by sending a copy of the patient’s chart. The service provider can give physicians any further information they require about the process.
From our point of view, the most effective way an attending physician can prepare a statement is to list the client’s problems and provide supporting copies of relevant test results. In most cases, it is not necessary to document office visits.
If we need more information, we will follow up with you. Unless we ask you to do so, we do not require that you see your patients in order to complete the statement. If, for professional reasons, you think you need to see your patients, you should discuss this with the person asking for the report so that any delays can be considered.
Time factor
It’s important that physicians provide their statements in a timely manner. They might be aware of the recent legal precedent in Canada of a physician being held responsible for the value of life insurance lost due to a delay on the part of that physician in providing the required statement.
We ask physicians to provide patient information, including medical history and test results, and we do the rest. We use physicians’ statements, together with other test results and reports that we might order, for underwriting purposes.
Physicians play an important role in the insurance application process. I hope this information will help save you time and expedite the insurance application process for your patients.
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