Many domestic travelers do not realize the importance and positive impact of having short-term domestic travel insurance on their trip. Domestic travel insurance plans can provide the following benefits to any travel team stateside:
Let’s look at these benefits in real life.
Scenario:
A church or ministry takes a group of youth across the country on a domestic mission trip. The church and ministry leadership think they have done enough to meet the Duty of Care standards by sending a first aid kit with the group leaders and having the participants and their parents sign a waiver. The leadership has even gone as far as sending a chaperone who is a nurse or other medically trained professional.
On day 3 of the trip, one of the students gets injured. The medical professional takes a look at the injury and decides it’s nothing extremely major but medication is needed. However, since they are not in their licensed state, they are not able to write a prescription for any medication. At this point, there are 2 options for the trip leadership.
OPTION 1:
They proceed to make many phone calls between the trip leadership, the student’s family, the student’s primary care physician, and a local physician or pharmacy. It takes until around day 5 to get everything sorted out and medication for the student.
OPTION 2:
They take the student to an urgent care or emergency room to receive treatment and have to send the bill to the family back home.
Neither of these options are truly the best option and in the best interest of the student and the family.
Let us present you with a third option that would have been available and highly recommended if the team had purchased domestic travel insurance.
OPTION 3:
The trip leaders remember that they have the domestic travel insurance policy which includes telemedicine. They quickly call the telemedicine provider and have the student seen virtually by a state-licensed medical professional. The doctor then calls in a prescription to a local pharmacy requested by the team leadership. In a matter of an hour or two the student is seen, diagnosed, and treatment is underway with no additional cost to the trip leadership or the family outside of the prescription cost.
In the event the injury is more severe and the telemedicine doctor recommends a trip to a local urgent care or emergency room, the domestic travel insurance acts as a secondary insurance for the family and the family ends up paying less out of pocket.
Out of these 3 options, which would you choose for your group?
Domestic plan highlights: