Outcomes Rocket_Stephanie Pearson: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so excited you tuned in again today because we have an incredible discussion with an amazing individual. Her name is Dr. Stephanie Pearson. She is a board-certified ob-gyn and an advocate for physicians’ disability, and life insurance. As a resident of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Stephanie grew up in southern New Jersey, received her BS from Emory University and her MD from MCP Hannemann, now Drexel University College of Medicine, and she completed her residency at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. Injured in the prime of her career, she’s made it her mission to educate and empower her peers about the importance of protecting their most valuable asset, their ability to earn an income, and life’s most important people, their families. She believes every physician deserves the protection disability insurance provides. In her role as CEO at PearsonRavitz, an insurance advisory firm, she leads her team to fulfill her mission across all 50 states. Such a vital topic to touch on, and Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us today.
Stephanie Pearson:
Well, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and so we’re going to cover a lot of really great things. So I would love to start off with what inspires your work in healthcare, Dr. Pearson?
Stephanie Pearson:
So basically, my own story, I mean, I can take you way back. I mean, I wanted to go into medicine to take care of people, right? I mean, I think that that’s the answer you’ll get from 99% of folks who go to med school. And I thought that I would be taking care of women on, till I died at the table. I used to joke that I’d be the older physician who, you know, people are like, whispering, maybe it’s time for Dr. P to step back. Unfortunately, the choice was made for me. I was kicked during a difficult delivery and my patient, who was quite lovely, I delivered her other children, which doesn’t happen very often anymore with the way that medicine is set up, she just got to the hospital with not enough time to get anesthesia on board and was a lot bigger than me. And just, it’s called labor, not a walk in the park, and she just got me in the right spot. I ended up with a torn labrum in my left shoulder. I developed a frozen shoulder, had surgery, went to sleep getting told I’d be back to work in 12 weeks, and next Wednesday will be nine years, not counting or anything, but I learned a lot the hard way. I thought that my husband and I planned appropriately. I thought we did everything the right way and really just came to find out that like many physicians, other people in healthcare, that I had been somewhat taken advantage of and not really properly educated and really became passionate and didn’t want my colleagues, my friends to make some of the mistakes that I made. I mean, it sounds almost trite saying that, but it’s the truth. You know, we really, I tried a bunch of different things when I first stopped practicing to try to figure out what I was going to do next, and insurance was not at the top of my list. And, however, I had been lecturing to area residency programs partly for catharsis and partly out of altruism, and one day my husband was like, you know, you know more about this topic than most people, maybe this should be a thing. And I thought it was the funniest, silliest thing I’d ever heard. I was like, I’m not a salesperson, I’m a physician. And he was like, right, but that’s, you’re educating, you’re not even talking about the sale, and it just kind of fit. I mean, it really just happened and we started at our kitchen table and over the last five, six years, it’s just nobody could see what was coming comign.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, well, listen, I think it’s great, you know, terrible that that happened. And so I guess you got kicked, you went in for surgery, and then was there complications in the surgery?
Stephanie Pearson:
No, I went in for a delivery like it was a vaginal delivery.
Saul Marquez:
And then you got kicked and then your shoulder.
Stephanie Pearson:
She kicked me in the shoulder, her leg came out of the stirrup, and as I was trying to get the baby out and she just got me in the right spot. I mean, if you talk to 100 OB-GYNs, you’re going to get crazy stories. We’ve been grabbed, we’ve been pinched, we’ve been scratched. We’ve been, you name it. It’s a, sometimes it’s a contact sport, but it just wasn’t my day.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, it sounds like it, just terrible, and how many of us are faced with these kinds of surprises? You know, I think the answer is many of us, right? We run into these things, and being prepared is critical to making sure that you have longevity both in your career and in your life, and so the planning is as important and having people that have been there done that, like Dr. Pearson, matters. So talk to us about what you do now, then talk to us about the company and how you’re adding value to physicians.
Stephanie Pearson:
So we started an insurance brokerage firm, so we are like Switzerland. We are not in bed with any particular carriers, whether it’s on the disability side or the life insurance side. We really lead with education. We ask a lot of questions upfront. I joke it’s like going to the doctor’s office because we have found that the more information we have upfront can help set realistic expectations, which is really what we’re all about, right? We don’t like surprises. And so we get a lot of information. There are only a handful of companies that provide what we refer to as specialty-specific disability insurance so that you’re covered for what it is you do day in and day out, and if you can’t do that, you’re covered even if you’re doing something else, right? So I’m not an ob-gyn anymore. I’m an insurance broker. I had private policies. I am getting paid. It just turned out I was under-insured and there were some other issues, but we really take the time to get to know our potential clients and we go over what are your actual options? What makes these products important, right? What is important to you may not be important to your next-door neighbor, and so we really want to focus on what’s the best for each person that we’re speaking to. As far as value-add goes, obviously, education, education, education, but we’ve also changed the payment structure for our brokers. So everyone’s salaried. We kind of got rid of that commission idea. The company itself gets paid on commissions, but we have 26 full-time employees and only six of us are brokers, right? So we can’t do our jobs well without our ancillary help doing their job well. So we’ve, everyone is salaried. We’ve taken that whole, you have to sell, out of the equation. We want people getting educated. We want people making the closest thing to informed consent. To me, that, I’ve been able to find outside of medicine.
Saul Marquez:
That’s valuable. That’s valuable, knowing that somebody has your best interest in mind that has been there, you know, in the worst of situations to the best of situations. How, so, I get the commission model and everything like that, how else would you say your business and the way that you guys do things is better than what’s out there today?
Stephanie Pearson:
I think that it’s all about relationship building. We spend a lot of time in the beginning. We’re not just sending you and, quotes, without any backing behind it, right? We’re really, we spend a good 45 minutes on the phone really getting to know you, getting to share what we do, right, building that rapport, going through, okay, here are your options. Let’s compare and contrast. Let’s make sure that you understand what you’re getting, what you’re not getting, and then the follow-up. So I was sold my policies X many years ago and then I really didn’t hear from my person. We make a point to touch base with people at least twice a year, oftentimes more than that, and we want people to know that we’re available any time for questions. Again, I like, I do a lot of lecturing so that we can get in front of more people. And we have ancillary staff, right? It’s not just you making a relationship with the person who’s, quote, selling you a policy, it’s our whole house, right? We have people every step of the way to hold your hand, to guide you through, to make sure that T’s are being crossed, Is are being dotted, and we’re really fanatical about making sure that everything is in place.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great. Thank you for that. It’s the entire support structure, not just that, hey, you have it now, you’re covered, answering questions and helping them wayfind in no matter what the situation is.
Stephanie Pearson:
And one of the mistakes I made was not keeping pace with my income. And so again, it’s, you kind of buy it and forget about it and we make sure that you’re not forgetting about it, right? That we’re touching base as you hit your anniversaries, have you changed jobs? Do you have an increase in income? Have you gotten a bonus, right? Are there other pieces of income that we should be protecting? You know, are you properly insured for life, right? Do you have children? Do you have dependents? Do you have a mortgage? You know, really kind of making sure that once you’re in, you’re in, and that we’re really following up on a regular basis.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, so that’s a really good point, Dr. Pearson. And so is it, do you find that oftentimes physicians set it and forget it and there’s a lot of inputs that could potentially, if the unfortunate circumstance does happen, they would benefit if they just chill and kind of relook at things annually?
Stephanie Pearson:
So you want to look annually before the bad thing happens, right?
Saul Marquez:
Exactly.
Stephanie Pearson:
Because what happened for me, right, was I didn’t, then I had the bad thing happen and found out I was underinsured, right? So we want to make sure that we’re keeping up to date with folks and making sure that they are keeping pace as their career ascends, right? If they move cross country, right? Now, it’s a little bit easier than it was 20-something years ago with the Internet, but we had moved a couple of times and I wasn’t getting mail, right? That doesn’t happen as much anymore because people don’t necessarily change their emails, but sometimes they do, right, if they’re in training and then they go into their real, real jobs, sometimes their educational account, where they trained gets closed, right, and they do have a new email, right? So they’re little things that potentially have big problems if we’re not taking care of them.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, no, a great call out. Great call out. That sensitivity to the entire process. And so you share the very unfortunate event that happened to you at the beginning, but you’ve built something really great for others to avoid having that happen to them.
Stephanie Pearson:
We’re trying.
Saul Marquez:
Aside from that, no, you are, you are. You’re doing it. You’re not trying, you’re doing. What would you say is the biggest setback you’ve seen since that decision, and what’s a key learning that’s come from that?
Stephanie Pearson:
Personal setback or industry setback?
Saul Marquez:
It could be whatever, however, you want to answer that question. The goal is for the listeners to say, holy crap, I just picked up a nugget here out of this one.
Stephanie Pearson:
So I would, so there’s a couple of things that are coming to mind, so I’m just going to brain dump them. One of the issues that we ran into personally that we’re seeing actually more and more since the beginning of COVID, was that my group benefit, so my employer disability policy, in fine print didn’t cover work-related injuries. And so I was flatly denied and told I would have been better off if I had fallen off my bike. And I will tell you that ten years ago that was the exception to the rule. It’s still the exception to the rule, but we’re seeing it so much more since the beginning of COVID, and we’re actually seeing that they’re putting in that they’re not covering work-related injuries or illnesses, which I think is a really slippery slope. I don’t know how anyone can prove where they’ve been exposed to certain illnesses. And so we are definitely seeing a trend where the employer benefits are even getting weaker than they used to be. And because we’re not traditionally taught about it, people think that they’re covered and then something happens, and I have to say, I wish you spoke to me six months ago or a year ago and that this just isn’t great. So I would say that.
Saul Marquez:
That’s a big deal.
Stephanie Pearson:
It’s huge.
Saul Marquez:
And so as part of what you guys do and this relationship you establish with your client to say, hey, throw us your contract, we’ll review it for you, we’ll let you know where the holes are.
Stephanie Pearson:
So we typically will ask for contracts and for master copies of the group benefits. Obviously prefaced with, we’re not lawyers and we’re not claims adjusters, but we have definitely read thousands and thousands of these documents and kind of have an idea of where to check for holes. That’s a big part of what we do because, again, you really want people to understand what do you have and what don’t you have, right? Because sometimes the what don’t you have is an even bigger deal. We find that a lot of people don’t know who pays for their benefit or if their benefit is going to be tax-free or not, right? And so we spend some time kind of going through that and helping them find the answers to those questions, and sometimes because we don’t know what we don’t know, right, is that we can actually help folks and say, look, these are the questions that you want to ask that we’re not finding the answer to or trust but verify the following, right? And so it’s not uncommon that after we speak with people, that we actually give them a little bit of homework.
Saul Marquez:
Nice, and hey, this stuff is, you know, it’s urgent. It’s, I mean, it’s, in my mind, I don’t know if you would agree, it’s urgent for people to do, but maybe not in the moment. So it’s important, but maybe not urgent now, but you better get it done.
Stephanie Pearson:
It is one of those things where no one likes it, right? I mean, this is insurance at its most basic form. And I have a saying, you know, people are used to me, are used to hearing me say it, right? You’d rather have it and not need it.
Saul Marquez:
Totally.
Stephanie Pearson:
Than need it and not have it because once something happens, it’s too late, right, and those are the hardest conversations to have when somebody calls me following a diagnosis of something, and now I have to say, there’s nothing I can do, because every now and again, there’s nothing that we can do. And so the goal is to get this when you’re young and healthy and happy and intact and can get coverage from head to toe, and there’s nothing that the carriers are going to say they’re not going to cover. And it’s really hard to think about that when you are, upper twenties, low thirties, starting out on this new adventure, and we’re supposed to be younger than, smarter than, healthier than, right? I talk a lot about the tyranny of perfection that exists in medicine, and that’s not just physicians, that’s physicians, nursing, therapists, you name it, right? But if you wait too long, there’s no going back, you know, and so, urgent, I don’t know if I necessarily use such a charged word, but, you know, I will tell people, look, the younger you are, the better, right, cost. It’s one of the pieces that goes into cost, and so you’re never going to get younger. Most of us are not getting healthier as much as we’d like to think we’re going to, you know, and so we’ll be happy when every resident finishing training is covered, and we’re a long ways away from that.
Saul Marquez:
I love that. Now, thank you for that. And so from your perspective and what you’re seeing here, Dr. Pearson, what do you think is a trend or technology that’s going to help physicians in this area today?
Stephanie Pearson:
It’s interesting because I’m not so sure that what I see coming up the pike is actually going to be helpful or hurtful. A lot of the carriers are moving away from getting traditional physician records, like hard copy records, and are doing more of the kind of electronic piecemealing. One of the problems that we have found with EMR is that things don’t come off unless somebody clicks it off. And so what do I mean by that? I had an unfortunate client a couple of months ago who’s been going to the same physician since she was in college. And she was being honest and told her physician in college that she was smoking a little bit, right? It’s college, people try things, whatever. So here she has a positive marijuana on her medical record. It never came off, and I’m sure that it was a lot of, hey, good to see you. Anything change? No, okay, keep moving.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah.
Stephanie Pearson:
Well, now, according to her electronic medical record, it looks like she has been smoking marijuana every day for the last 20 years, right? And now we’re fighting to get her medical records addended so that they’re accurate and without records being actually kind of asked for in hand, I get nervous that we’re going to see more people have issues tied to medications that they’re no longer on, medical problems that have resolved, right, social history habits that no longer happen. So I know that the goal of EMR was to make things easier, faster, and better. We’re actually seeing it being a little bit hurtful for people, and I would really urge everyone who’s listening, the next time you’re at the doctor, ask them if you can look over their shoulder and actually look at what’s in your medical record because I can tell you even personally because I have no secrets, I was just at my PCP two months ago and it had a surgery for me that I never had. And there’s a big difference between a hysterectomy and a hysteroscopy. A hysterectomy means they’re taking your uterus out of your body. A hysteroscopy means they’re putting a camera in and looking. I had a hysteroscopy, my medical record said I had a hysterectomy. So it’s a big difference, right?
Saul Marquez:
Were you billed for an -ectomy or an -oscopy?
Stephanie Pearson:
I wasn’t billed. I wasn’t billed inappropriately.
Saul Marquez:
Okay, you weren’t incorrectly billed, but it was stated incorrectly.
Stephanie Pearson:
But it was stated incorrectly and had I not looked at that, and that went to some third party, right, it would be a little bit of a nightmare. And so one of the, I know you’re saying what are trends that are going to help? I’m a little bit nervous that this trend that was supposed to help, in fact, may not.
Saul Marquez:
It’s a good call-out.
Stephanie Pearson:
And from an insurance standpoint, I mean, I do think that there’s a move to insure tech, which I think will help more on the life insurance side than the disability insurance side because there are so many more nuances with disability insurance that you want to make sure that everything is 100% on point so that there aren’t issues moving forward, but I do anticipate that sometime soon insure tech will nudge into our space.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s fascinating. Yeah, no, and you know, when it comes to these things, I’m glad you went there, Stephanie. I mean, it is about the watch-outs, and calling some of these out is hugely valuable to everybody listening, and now I’m thinking, dang, what does my EMR say?
Stephanie Pearson:
We find mistakes a lot. Like, it is not infrequent that it’s not accurate.
Saul Marquez:
That is interesting, and then, and so for like your client here, I mean, would that adversely affect her in some way to receive a benefit, or what’s the impact?
Stephanie Pearson:
Initially, I couldn’t get her covered because they were saying.
Saul Marquez:
You couldn’t even get her coverage because of that.
Stephanie Pearson:
Right, and then I had to go back
Saul Marquez:
Because she was, quote-unquote, a pot smoker.
Stephanie Pearson:
Right, they don’t want somebody smoking every day, right? There have been new rules with legalization and all that stuff, but they don’t want to take somebody who admits to smoking every day, right? So another, going back to kind of what are some of our value adds is our ability to advocate for people because we have medical knowledge here as well as insurance knowledge, that I could go back to the underwriter and say, look, I got the records, too. This is something she said when she was 18. You know, what do we need to do, right? Like, how long do we have to wait? What does she need to do to prove, etc.? And we were able to kind of set up a path to, okay, go back to the doctor, get this letter, right? Get the medical records addended. How many clean urines do we need to have, right? Like so, we were able to eventually get her coverage, but it was not without hiccups.
Saul Marquez:
Sure. Yeah, no, that’s a great call-out, really appreciate that. Wow, okay, well, folks, if you’ve been wondering, hey, oh, my God, I wonder where I’m at with my insurance, if you’re a physician, or if you’re an individual thinking about your life insurance, whatever it is, these things are important and they become really important when you need them, but it’s important to take care of them before that. So, Stephanie, if you can, leave us with the closing thought and the best place that the listeners could connect with you and follow your work.
Stephanie Pearson:
Okay, so a leaving thought is there’s no time better than now to make sure that you have in place what you need in place later. You don’t want to get caught without it. As far as how to find us, our website is PearsonRabitz.com. Hopefully, you can put the spelling in the notes.
Saul Marquez:
We will. It’ll be in the show notes.
Stephanie Pearson:
And our office number 610-658-3251. We’re on Facebook, or on LinkedIn, Instagram soon. I am not as socially, or as social media savvy as maybe we should be, but incredibly easy to find.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. Well, Dr. Pearson, I really appreciate it. Folks, take advantage of Dr. Pearson and her team’s expertise, now is the time. And Stephanie, really appreciate you jumping on with us.
Stephanie Pearson:
Thank you, Saul, have a great week. Thanks for having me.
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