Can you use Insurance for Personal Training?

As our health care system change more medical professionals and insurance companies are acknowledging the benefits of regular exercise and its effect on overall health as well as its ability to further manage recovering from injuries and surgery. Hospitals and physical therapy clinics are starting to add gyms on to their facilities and insurance companies are paying for gym memberships.

But the question remains will your insurance cover personal training?

The current answer is no. You will not be able to go down to the local gym and sign up with Joe the trainer and get covered training. However, if you have a medical condition and a doctor’s recommendation that an exercise program will help to improve that condition you may get reimbursed for the sessions you paid for or the insurance company may pay for a short amount of sessions. Both outcomes rely severely on your insurance carrier, your policy coverage, who is to supply the training and your deductible. The deductible is one of the most important because if your deductible is $1000 dollars you would be better off paying yourself.

Few keys to getting approved for trainingInsurance companies

No government based insurance company will cover any treatment or training not performed by a licensed professional. Government based insurances are Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare. Insurance companies that are known to cover your training in some way are United, Cigna, and Aetna.

Policy coverage

Check your policy coverage. Many people have policies that they do not understand or know what they cover. You may have many benefits that you are not aware of and could be missing out on.

Trainers

The chance of getting your insurance company to pay for your training or reimburse you will greatly be increased if you go to a professional who works with medical exercise clients or post rehab clients. My company for example is Dynamic Fitness & Medical Training. Medical training professionals will most likely have a system in place with insurance companies and know the proper paperwork that needs to be submitted.Your insurance company will not pay for the guy who just has a tight I.T band. It must be for a medical condition and not just the common diabetic and hypertensive patient. This can include injuries or surgeries such as rotator cuff repairs, bicep tendinitis, ankle sprain or joint replacements.

With injuries and past surgeries, the individual would have had to go through physical therapy and exhausted all their sessions. Getting the doctors approval is the most important step because if the doctor does not feel like you should be exercising then they will not write the recommendation. The doctor must be on board for your program. Having your medical fitness professional send his or her recommendation to your physician will greatly help make the process easier for the physician as it should also include how long the program should be, what exercises will be done and the expected outcome. This leaves the doctor with only having to approve the program instead of figuring out details.