I have "practiced" insurance medicine for 27 years as Medical Director of Northwestern Mutual, the largest underwriter of individual life insurance in America and am a member of the American Academy of Insurance Medicine, and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. And, I am now in private insurance medicine consulting at drbobgleeson.com (click on "insurance medicine" in the left-hand column).
A physician specializing in insurance medicine applies his or medical knowledge to underwriting or risk classification, or, in the case of life insurance, to making a best estimate of when a person is likely to die. Maybe not that person, but when half, the average, of a group of 1000 people of the same sex and age and with the same medical condition is likely to die.
The physician's medical knowledge is used to develop or write the underwriting standards or guidelines and then apply those to individual applicants. When setting guidelines, they write the rules determining the estimated life expectancy of people who have salutary risk cardiovascular risk factors and no underlying disease, those who smoke cigarettes, those who have a melanoma, a heart attack. When they look at individual case of, for example, someone who had a heart attack, they ask how much of the myocardium (heart muscle) was damaged, what was the treatment, what meds are they on, how good is their compliance, and how thorough is the follow-up? The answers can either increase or decrease the risk assessment.
Is insurance medicine interesting? You bet. Intellectually stimulating? Absolutely. Challenging? Every day.
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