Can Your Disability Insurance Company Dictate The Medical Treatment You Must Receive To Collect Benefits? Part 3

“Appropriate Care” and “Most Appropriate Care”

In this series, we are looking at the different types of care provisions disability insurers insert into their policies so that they can later argue that they have a right to dictate the terms of your medical care.  In Part 1, we discussed how many policyholders do not even realize that their disability insurance policy contains a care provision until the insurance company threatens to deny their claim for failure to obtain what the insurer perceives as sufficient medical care.  We also discussed how care provisions have evolved over time to become more and more onerous to policyholders.  In Part 2, we looked at one of the earliest and least stringent care provisions—the “regular care” provision—in detail.

In this post, we will be looking at a stricter care provision—the “appropriate care” provision.  Here is an example of a typical “appropriate care” provision:

Appropriate Care means you are receiving care by a Physician which is appropriate for the condition causing the disability.”

Disability insurance carriers implemented this policy language to allow their claims handlers and in-house doctors to weigh in on the type and quality of care their policyholders receive.  As you’ll remember from Part 2 of this series, “regular care” provisions only required policyholders to be monitored regularly by a physician.  Thus, under a “regular care” provision, as long as the policyholder was seeing a doctor, the insurer could not scrutinize or direct his or her treatment.  Only by changing the policy language could they hope to have greater influence over the medical decisions of their policyholders.

This prompted disability insurers to add the additional requirement that the care must be “appropriate.”  But what is “appropriate?” If you are suffering from cervical spinal stenosis, you likely have several reasonable treatment options available to you. For example, your physician might recommend physical therapy, but also indicate that you would be a candidate for more invasive treatment, such as steroid injections.  If you have an “appropriate care” provision, does that mean that your disability insurer gets to decide which treatment you receive?

When presented with this question, most courts determined that “appropriate care” limits the insurer’s review of its policyholder’s care to whether it was necessary and causally related to the condition causing the disability.[1]  Courts also held that “appropriate” care does not mean perfect care or the best possible care—it simply means care that is suitable under the circumstances.[2]  Thus, if physical therapy, steroid injections, and surgery are all suitable treatments for cervical stenosis, most courts agree that your insurer cannot deny your disability claim or terminate your benefits based upon your decision to undergo a course of treatment they view as less effective than another.

In response to these cases, disability insurers again modified their policy language and created the “most appropriate” care provision.  Here is an example of what a “most appropriate” care provision looks like:

“[You must receive] appropriate treatment and care, which conforms with generally accepted medical standards, by a doctor whose specialty or experience is the most appropriate for the disabling condition.”

This change places significant restrictions on a claimant’s autonomy not only because it limits the type of physician the claimant may choose, but because it restricts the claimant’s medical care to a singular “appropriate” course of treatment.

These types of provisions can make collecting disability benefits extremely difficult.  For example, take the experience of Laura Neeb, a hospital administrator whose chemical sensitivity allergies became so severe that they rendered her totally disabled.  After one of her doctors—Dr. Grodofsky—concluded that she had no identifiable allergies, Ms. Need sought another opinion from Dr. William Rea, founder of the Environmental Health Center in Dallas, Texas.  Dr. Rea concluded that Ms. Neeb’s hypersensitivity to chemicals was so severe that she was “unable to engage in any type of work,” and required extensive treatment to manage the condition.  Ms. Neeb’s insurer, Unum, nonetheless denied the disability claim.  The court ultimately held that Ms. Neeb failed to obtain the “most appropriate care” by treating with Dr. Rea, agreeing with Unum that Dr. Grodofsky’s conclusions were correct.[3]

Ms. Neeb’s case illustrates just how restrictive the “most appropriate care” provision can be. It places the burden squarely on the policyholder to show that their chosen course of treatment and treatment provider are most appropriate for their condition.  If your disability insurance policy contains a “most appropriate care” provision, it is essential that you find a qualified, supportive treatment provider who is willing to carefully document your treatment and the reasoning behind it.  You do not want to place yourself in a position where you cannot justify the treatment you are receiving and must choose between an unwanted medical procedure and losing your benefits.

In the final post of this series, we will discuss the hyper-restrictive care provisions appearing in disability insurance policies being issued today and the serious threats they pose to patient autonomy.

[1] 617 N.W.2d 777 (Mich. Ct. App. 2000)

[2] Sebastian v. Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co., 73 F.Supp.2d 521 (D. Md. 1999)

[3] Neeb v. Unum Life Ins. Co. of America, 2005 WL 839666 (2005).

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