Group-structured disability insurance with guaranteed-issue paths, specialty own-occupation language, and benefit ceilings sized to physician income. Sponsored by your organization, accessed through the partner association we work with, and unavailable anywhere else to your contracted clinicians.
At a Glance
Why This Product Exists
1099 clinicians want disability coverage on their real income; most don't know a structure for it exists. Organizations want to offer it as a retention tool, but DIY benefit arrangements for 1099 populations can trigger ERISA and reclassification exposure. And standard insurance products were built around W-2 employees and individual buyers, not contracted specialists.
Most 1099 clinicians assume meaningful disability coverage isn't available to them, or that one-off individual policies are the only option. They don't ask their organizations for a group-structured benefit because they don't know one exists. When the program is offered through a sponsoring organization, take-up is high. The demand is real; it's just been invisible.
Group LTD assumes a W-2 paycheck. Individual DI is slow, priced for the open market, and underwritten clinician-by-clinician. Neither product serves a 1099 contracted physician at specialty group rates, and neither was designed to be sponsored by an organization on behalf of its contracted workforce.
Organizations that try to assemble benefits for their 1099 contractors on their own can accidentally trigger ERISA fiduciary requirements, plan-document obligations, or contractor reclassification exposure. The partner-association structure behind this program is designed to keep the benefit accessible to clinicians while keeping the sponsoring organization clean of those risks.
Hollowtree's 1099 Disability solution was designed to resolve all three problems at the same time.
What Makes This Unique
1099 contractors usually have to choose between expensive individual policies or no coverage at all. This program is structured to give organizations a new group option, one that's only available through Hollowtree.
Coverage is offered through a partner association that holds the master policy, with your organization as the sponsoring partner. That means your 1099 contractors qualify for group-style coverage and group-discounted rates, even though they aren't on payroll. Most carriers can't natively support this. We can.
Group economics for a contractor population.
Qualifying clinicians can access coverage up to $10,000 per month without medical underwriting. That's especially valuable for high-earning specialists with health histories that would block or significantly reprice individual DI. The group-association structure is what makes this possible.
Coverage they likely couldn't get on their own.
Disability definitions are tied to the work clinicians actually perform. The policy uses specialty-specific language based on the CPT codes they bill, helping ensure the definition of disability holds up at claim time. Own-occupation coverage is built for specialty work, so a surgeon who can no longer operate would be considered disabled, even if they could still practice general medicine.
Designed for the way specialists actually get paid.
Premium collection works without payroll deduction. We collect payment with after-tax dollars via ACH, credit card, and Apple Pay. The 1099 program runs cleanly outside of your organization's compensation structure while maintaining compliance. Your team doesn't need to invent a process.
Built around how 1099s actually get paid.
Retention by Design
Most 1099 disability programs treat the contractor as the customer. This one treats your organization as the customer, and that changes the strategic shape of the benefit.
The program is yours to offer. Your 1099 contractors get coverage they couldn't access on their own, at group rates they couldn't get on their own, with underwriting paths they couldn't qualify for on their own. The benefit reads as your organization's investment in their wellbeing.
When a contractor leaves the organization, the coverage does not travel with them. The protection they value (particularly the guaranteed-issue piece) is tied to staying contracted. That makes this one of the few benefit structures that retains people who don't have a payroll relationship.
Eligibility requires a 75-hour-per-month contracting minimum. Coverage is earned by being active. That gives organizations a productivity-aligned incentive baked into the benefit itself — not as a punishment, but as recognition that this is a benefit for clinicians who are actively contributing.
“Recruit, retain, protect — but the retain part is the one that pays for itself.”
Internal note from a Hollowtree partner organization.
How Coverage Works
We coordinate the partner-association relationship and structure coverage options for your specific 1099 population.
Hollowtree runs the enrollment campaign: communication, education, mobile-optimized sign-up, and live support. Your team doesn't carry the rollout.
See the Group Disability Enrollment pageEligibility requires a 75-hour-per-month contracting minimum. Coverage stays in force as long as that threshold is met.
Coverage is tied to the contractor's relationship with the sponsoring organization. If the contractor leaves, the coverage does not travel with them.
Example Coverage: Anesthesiologist
Specialty examples are illustrative. Actual coverage depends on the partner-association agreement and underwriting outcomes.
Who Sponsors This
Any organization with a meaningful 1099 contracted clinical population can sponsor this program. It's most often offered by these types of organizations:
Offer disability coverage to the 1099 clinical workforce most legacy benefit programs don't reach.
Differentiate on benefits where physicians compare assignments by total package, not just hourly rate.
Create a benefit that travels with the contractor across assignments inside your organization.
Brings disability coverage to the 1099 clinicians your organization relies on every day.
Cover the specialty contractors whose income depends entirely on procedural capability.
Maintain a credible benefits story when a portion of the workforce moves to contractor status.
Long-Term Care Planning
A complete income protection plan for a 1099 clinician covers two horizons. Disability insurance protects earnings if illness or injury stops you from working in your specialty. Long-term care planning protects assets and family decades later, when the risk shifts from lost income to the cost of extended care. Most contracted physicians address the first horizon and leave the second one open. The same group structure that makes 1099 disability coverage possible can carry a long-term care benefit alongside it.
For the under-500 contracted segment, four U.S. carriers write the relevant group benefit today: Transamerica, Trustmark, Chubb through Combined Insurance, and Allstate through American Heritage Life. Each writes group life insurance with a long-term care or chronic care acceleration rider, on a guaranteed-issue basis for qualifying groups. None of them writes a standalone group long-term care policy. The rider accelerates the life benefit to pay for care, which is what gives a contracted clinical population access to long-horizon protection without individual underwriting.
For the full picture, read how group LTC works through the four U.S. carriers writing it today. It covers the chassis, the guaranteed-issue thresholds, and where each carrier fits.
Payment structure matters as much as the carrier. The 10-pay payment structure funds the benefit over ten years rather than for life, so a clinician finishes paying while still contracting and carries paid-up coverage into retirement. For a 1099 population whose contributions are not tied to payroll, a fixed payment window is easier to plan around than open-ended premiums.
Bringing both horizons under one sponsored program gives your contracted clinicians the income protection plan W-2 employees take for granted, and it gives your organization a second reason for those clinicians to stay.
The Policy, Annotated
Disability policy contracts run 30 pages of legal language. Carriers and brokers will summarize them in marketing copy, but they rarely show you the actual wording. We do. The Sun Life group disability policy underlying our 1099 coverage is annotated section by section, with every term that matters explained in plain English.
Built for clinicians who want to verify what they are signing. Useful for brokers evaluating the coverage. No email required, no gate, no PDF download to find buried somewhere later.
Read the annotated policyWill I get paid?
Material and Substantial Duties means the actual procedures which you are regularly and continuously performing during the 12 consecutive months immediately prior to your disability.
The procedures you actually performed in the 12 months before disability began. Tied to your CPT-coded clinical work.
Under an any-occupation policy, an insurer can deny a physician's claim if they can perform any role they're reasonably qualified for. This policy uses the narrower own-specialty standard.
If you're a broker working with MSOs, locum tenens companies, or other organizations with 1099 clinicians, here's how broker partnerships work at Hollowtree.
Visit the broker partnership pageIf you're a 1099 contracted clinician and your organization isn't a Hollowtree partner, this coverage isn't accessible to you yet. Here's what to ask your group.
See what to ask your organizationProduct-specific questions about how the 1099 Disability Insurance program is structured. For implementation questions, see the Group Disability Enrollment page.
We'll review your contracted population, structure the program, and run the rollout. Your team confirms eligibility and sponsors the benefit. We handle the rest.
