What Are the Different Types of Disability when Using Insurance?

When you suffer a medical setback of any degree it can affect your life in many different ways depending on the severity of the setback. While on a personal level a setback of any kind may seem severe and life altering, to your insurance it has to qualify on different levels to be eligible for certain benefits. What you will find here is an explanation of the different terms related to different types of disability as defined in insurance situations. There are four main types of disability for insurance concerns:

Temporary Partial Disability is a kind of disability that could affect the quality or efficiency of your work but not your ability to do the work. In other words, if you are a writer and you break your hand you can still type, just not at your normal pace. You are partially disabled in this area for a temporary period of time as your hand will eventually heal.

Temporary Total Disability is the kind of disability that renders you unable to do something for a shorter period of time, though it may seem longer to you. For instance, you have back surgery and are unable to load boxes at the warehouse you have worked at for 10 years. You will not be able to do the job at all for an extended period of time, but if the surgery is successful you will regain the ability to lift after a while.

Permanent Partial Disability is when you are rendered unable to perform an act but you can still work in another capacity in your field. For example, you are a police officer who works on traffic patrol and one day you are hit by a car. You are hurt and a result is a chronic fatigue condition where you can no longer be on patrol but you can work in the office at a desk. You are permanently disabled from working your original job, but not completely disabled where you cannot work at all.

Permanent total disability is what happens when you are injured and rendered completely unable to work in any capacity whatsoever. Taking the previous example with a police officer being hit by a car, permanent total disability is what would happen if that accident made the officer unable to walk or have use of their hands or something similar. They are permanently disabled and unable to do any work at all.