Being a pharmacist can be taxing. And when you’re offering medical advice and services to a high volume of people each day, the last thing you want to deal with is you or any of your permanent staff getting ill and taking a long period of time off work.
While larger pharmacies might be able to handle daily operations with less people on hand, others might be swamped and find it difficult to offer the normal level of care and service people expect from them.
Ultimately, it is prudent to take out the right types of cover to protect you and your business. This means finding the right income protection insurance to ensure you are still able to earn a living, as well as effective locum insurance for pharmacists, which allows you to hire some well needed support to fill in for any absences caused by you or your colleagues falling ill.
Initial Considerations
If you are self-employed as a pharmacist, you may not have access to any employer sponsored sick pay arrangements. Therefore, you may wish to cover your lost income with some kind of income protection insurance. And if you own your practice, you will need to consider how pharmacist locum insurance might be necessary to cover your absence or the absence of any of your staff.
What Does Income Protection Usually Cover
If you can’t work because of illness or disability, an income protection plan should pay out a set income to you. While it is not designed to help you earn more money than you would if you were working full time, it should cover for your usual expected income in your normal working situation.
This is also known as: income protection insurance, income protection cover, sick insurance, sickness insurance, income insurance, income life insurance, salary insurance, salaries insurance, wage insurance, wages insurance or earnings insurance. The title may differ depending on the insurance provider, but the basics are the same.
Key Characteristics of Income Protection Insurance
It is important to check exactly what is covered in any policy offered by a provider, however, there are some common characteristics that most plans will offer.
- Designed to pay out income to cover lost salary/wages
- Often comes with a waiting or deferred period
- Will usually cover pharmacists up to the age of 65
- Medical evidence is typically required to prove illness
Locum Insurance for Pharmacists
All practices are different so it is important to seek cover that best suits your needs. If you do enough research you will find multiple different levels of locum insurance cover to suit your circumstances.
There are a number of different variables you can choose from when it comes to locum insurance, such as how long you could continue to practice before hiring a locum and calling upon the policy. Also, some policies will pay out to you regardless whether you even hire a locum or not. Sometimes the money is better spent elsewhere to support the smooth running of a practice.
Ultimately, you have an obligation to provide care for your patients throughout the year, and having locum insurance in place will guarantee you are able to still offer the level of service your patients need.
You should find a policy that covers the various costs you will incur while operating without a full team of staff. This might mean partners or other staff members will need to fill in, which could prevent them from tending to their own activities and reducing their ability to sustain a profitable enterprise.
Important Considerations
Some of the most important questions to ask yourself include:
- How would your practice cope with an employee who is off sick for more than a week?
- If an employee’s family member becomes ill, and they are required to provide care to this family member, would your practice be in a position to cover this lost resource?
You might think you would be able to cope with a member of staff off sick, but take some time to ask yourself the hard questions and be truthful about the real impact it would have on your ability to operate.
