#68: How I Turned a Disability Into a Mission To Help Physicians With Injuries ft Stephanie Pearson

Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. I'm your host, Peter Kim. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe so I can bring it to you every week. Now let's get on with the show. Hi, everyone. I'm super excited to welcome Dr. Stephanie Pearson here today. She's a board certified OB GYN and she's the co founder of Pearson Rabbits. We're going to find out all about it, but it's a firm that specializes in disability and life insurance for physicians and other healthcare professionals. It's a nationwide company and she's helped thousands of physicians protect their most valuable asset, which is their ability to earn an income. She has an awesome story and I'm excited to talk to her today. Stephanie, how you doing?

Hi, Peter, how are you? Nice to be with you.

Yeah, nice to be with you too. I know that you're an extremely busy person. You've built up this amazing company, but we're going to talk a little bit about the early years, okay. How it got there. Now, obviously you're a board certified OB gyn. You're a physician. Was this ever on your radar about starting a company or being an entrepreneur?

Oh, my God, no. I was very happy doing what I was doing. To give you kind of a little bit of a back story, I trained and worked in Philadelphia for my clinical career and figured that I would be operating until the end of time. And unfortunately that wasn't to be. And I was kicked in the left shoulder during a difficult patient delivery and she just got me in the right spot. I ended up with a torn labrum. Was told it would heal. It didn't. I developed a frozen shoulder. I had surgery. They said I'd be back to work in 12 weeks. And that was eight years ago last Tuesday. Not that I'm counting or anything, but I have considerable range of motion deficits and nerve damage in my left arm. I was not cleared to do OB or operate and I learned a lot the hard way. And honestly, I thought that I did everything right. And turns out that like many of us, I was just too trusting. And I found myself getting really passionate about disability and life insurance after all the things I had to go through. And just about everyone I knew was asking me to look at their stuff because once you know somebody that it's happened to, oftentimes that's the wake up call. It's, wait a second. If this can happen to you and you're 40 and healthy, yeah, so I just outed myself for my age.

So how did that feel when that happened to you and you had that injury and then you said it was going to, you thought it was going to be 12 weeks or so and at some point you realized, oh, this is going to be a longer type thing. Like how did the, how did you feel towards your injury and your career and what was that like?

I cannot really express how horrible it was. I, as I mentioned, I had just turned 40. I had actually been asked to be the chairperson for our department and then to turn around and get terminated because my contract said I had to be able to do 100% of my job was earth shattering. I mean, I don't mean to hyperbolize that I, in a matter of a very short period of time, really lost my identity. I had always been Dr. Pearson. I didn't change my name when I got married. It's who I was. And all of a sudden I wasn't. And I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know how we were going to pay our bills. At the time, I was the primary breadwinner. My husband at the time was a flight nurse. Way cooler job than mine, but I made more. And so all of a sudden I had a four year old and a six year old and we had bought a house, right? We were living the dream, had a new house. Life was great. I was going up the corporate ladder. I was the person that people sent cases to. I mean, the OR was my happy place. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I was suicidal at one point. It was only through really intense counseling and having an incredibly supportive husband that I made it to the other side. And actually he brought home a puppy one day and said, the boys and I are not enough. Get out of bed and take care of something again. And I started going on really long walks with my dog and taking her to dog parks. And that was really what kind of flipped the switch. And I am also very passionate about how physicians treat, treat other physicians. I have to be honest, physicians were some of the meanest people to me when it happened. Because I have an invisible disability, right? I look fine, but if you ask me to raise my arms up, I can't, right? So I don't look disabled. And I wouldn't say that I'm a disabled human, I'm a disabled OB gyn. I think there's a really big difference there. My brain still works, my legs still work. I can't go rock climbing anymore. But there's a lot that I can do. And that was part of the counseling that I went through, was trying to figure out, okay, my brain works, what am I going to do now to be a productive member of society, to make money? And that's kind of where it shifted.

Tell me.

It might have gone off there.

I mean, that, I mean, that is a crazy story. Obviously going from being, you know, you know, at the almost pinnacle of your career, an injury happening. I mean, it's also, you got terminated, which I'm not going to go into all the details right now, but that's a horrible thing. Losing your identity as a physician and caregiver, having some financial issues, it sounds like, but then finding your way out of it. Like you said that your puppy and that sort of thing. But you said at some point you made a transition where you decided, like, what am I going to do with the rest of my life and career? And so what steps did you take then and what did you decide to do?

So I had been put a little bit through the wringer as far as insurances were concerned. I found out the hard way that my group benefit from my employer in fine print, did not cover work related injuries. I was flatly denied and told I would have been better off had I fallen off my bike. And admittedly, I would do the same thing again. I needed to get this kid out and the baby's healthy and mom's healthy. That's the oath I took, right? And now they didn't take care of me. And so I did have a private policy, but found out that it wasn't quite what it should have been. And I knew nothing about workman's comp. It took 14 months and three court appearances, at which one they said I could be a billing secretary because I had the aptitude to learn codes. And I was just kind of shouting from the rooftops, right? I didn't want to see this happen to any of my friends. And Scott Ravitz, who's my now business partner, had reached out to me because he was taking care of one of my friends and heard my story. And turns out that we have a weird, small world connection. I grew up with his cousins. He's been tailgating with my brothers for years at Eagles games. And actually he and my husband were the ones who were like, you know, you're telling all your friends about this and you're reviewing people's policies. We should probably make it legitimate. And honestly, Peter, I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. I was Like, I'm not a salesperson. I don't know anything about insurance. And Scott was like, what you've been through? You know more about insurance than 99% of the physicians I've ever spoken to. And like a good doctor, I locked myself in a room with textbooks and magic markers, highlighters, and studied for the test and was like, okay, if I can pass this test, then we'll do it. And my husband was like, do you really think you've made it through med school and residency? You're not going to pass this test. And I was like, hello. So fast forward, I passed the test. I got Lamye self licensed and really just ground kind of grassroots. I started reaching out to friends of mine and was setting up residency lectures, and it just kind of took on its own traction. And I realized, oh, my gosh, like, this really is a niche and other folks like me don't know enough. You know, we haven't been properly educated. We really don't have people advocating for us. And I really was like, you know what? I'm going to take this industry and flip it on its head because I have the knowledge as a physician and now I have the knowledge as an insurance person, and let's see where this goes. And literally, that's how it started. I was at my kitchen table and suddenly I was working 247 and my husband was like, you're going to burn out and we need help. And slowly things started happening. And the next thing you know, it's a year later. Scott and I officially partnered, and in four years, we've grown to 27 people in our company. We have clients in all 50 states, and it's really something I've become incredibly passionate about. I think that everyone needs this, and it's kind of a necessary evil. Nobody wants to buy insurance. There are way more exciting things to spend money on. But now I've seen what it does, and I have another disabled physician who works with us. I have started on the side. I also have a private Facebook group called Physicians for Physicians, which is specifically for physicians who, because of injury or illness, have had to change the scope of their practice or leave medicine. So there's also community outreach and a support network that I didn't have. You know, there was a lot of, what do you mean you can't do your job? Blah, blah, blah. You know, there's kind of a tyranny of perfection that exists in medicine. We're supposed to be stronger than, tougher than, better than. And at the end of the day, we're all human and things happen. I wish I had a crystal ball, but then I'd be on an island getting a suncan.

Yeah. I think people, when they think about disability insurance or even life insurance and these kind of things, I mean, they kind of all know that they should, you know, you've heard you should get it, but most people think, oh, it's never going to happen to me or I'll deal with it at a later time. Like, what are you seeing out there now that you're probably getting the call when things happen. So not to scare people into it or these kind of things, but what are some of the. I wouldn't say the numbers, but how, how often are you seeing these kind of things happen to a. I mean, is it a real possibility in terms of numbers and probability of some physician, at least in a partial way, experiences something which allows them to not work for a while?

So if you look at published numbers, right, the published numbers are 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 people at some point in their working life will sustain an injury or illness that will take you out of the workforce for at least six months. That's kind of the headline, right? I can't actually get the exact physician numbers because the carriers will tell you it's proprietary. What I can say is that I have hundreds of members in my Facebook group, right? So several hundred just by word of mouth that have had issues. And I've had multiple clients who have had to go out on claim that I've been able to really help in the back end, which I think for me is just as important or more important than the front end. You know, at the end of the day, most of the claims are illness related. And I think that that's one of the misconceptions. Cancer doesn't discriminate. Autoimmune issues don't discriminate. I'm not the typical person who goes out on claim. The typical person who goes out on claim, it's illness related, it's fatigue related, musculoskeletal cancer, mental health, pregnancy issues. And so, you know, I can't give real numbers because it's proprietary. I see risk, it's a real risk, you know, and I think that the, the sooner that people prepare for it, the better off they are. The calls that hurt me the most are when they call me after the fact. You know, it's. I just found out that I have X and now I need this. And I'm like, yeah, but now we can't get it. There are things that makes people uninsurable. Right. And there are things that carriers are not going to cover, that is pre existing diagnoses. While we're trying to get people the best coverage, the carriers are trying to figure out what can they get away without doing. And it's those calls that come in after the fact that where I just feel helpless. And I know that I can't make magic.

I mean, you just mentioned one of the biggest mistakes that people make, I guess when they think about disability is I'll deal with it once I kind of have an issue. It sounds like by that point you're stuck. Right?

Yeah.

What are some of the other big, I'd say mistakes that people make when they think about disability assurance that just making, you know, just shifting the way they think about it can make a significant impact on the backside.

I think that a lot of people erroneously think that their group benefit is going to cover them. And I've seen time and time again where people are just not aware of what they actually have. And I would say there's three really big issues. One is taxation. Right. So most employer benefits are employer paid. And if your employer is paying for your benefit, any money that you get back is going to be taxable, whereas private policies you're paying with post tax dollars. So the benefit's going to be tax free. So big difference between money that's getting taxed and money that's not getting taxed. Additionally, most employer benefits are going to have a cap. And so it might be 50% of your base income or base salary up to let's just say $10,000 a month. Right. But that's not what we see on our open enrollment. It's one line group disability insurance. And you check a box. When we start looking at how people's incomes are broken down. And I will say a lot of university programs, there's tiers. So it's you have a base salary, then you have a teaching salary, then you have RV use or overtime or bonuses or what have you. And all of a sudden A physician thinks 60% of my income is covered, but it's really 60% of your base. And if your base is only a small portion of what you're making, it's incredibly eye opening. And you don't want it to be eye opening when you need it. Right. So that's a big issue. And portability. So ownership. Right. Most people are going to change jobs three to five times over the life of their career. And most group disability benefits are employment dependent. So you leave you're not taking it with you. Whereas a private policy, it's yours, it's in your back pocket, you own it. The biggest issue is language. It's really important to understand that there's no standardization of language in insurance like there is in medicine and lots of other fields. So they can say its own occupation, but the devil's in the details. And a lot of times what we see when we actually review these policies is it might be own occupation for two years and then it switches to any occupation or it says its own occupation. But they have this very interesting definition that's called held to the national economy or the local labor market. It is not specific to what one employee does at one employer site. What that allows them to do is cast a really wide net that says this is what you would, could, should be able to do based on your training, education and skillset. And if we put we'll use OB GYN, right? I put 100 OBGYNs up against a wall. We're not all doing the same thing. We're not all making money the same way. And you want to be covered for what it is you do. And most of the group benefits will define total disability as the inability to do your job and you're not gainfully employed. Most of us want to do something and you don't want to have to worry about losing a benefit while you're trying to figure out what's next. I used to actually say the old adage that I'd give my left arm if I could be home with my boys more. Turns out I gave my left arm to be home with my boys more. And after six weeks I, I was done. I have a lot of respect for stay at home parents. I have found that most physicians not really cut out for it. And with a private policy, we have the ability to make it truly specialty specific. And there's one word that gets changed instead of it saying and not gainfully employed. It's regardless if you're gainfully employed. So for instance, I did have a private policy. I am still getting paid by that company and I've been able to do lots of other things ultimately landing on this company. And as long as I am not practicing OB GYN the way that I practiced, I'm going to be on claim until I'm 65 because that's my problem.

Have you seen, especially in the past, obviously the year or so when year and a half. So since Covid's come about, and I know that there have been and heard whispers of changes in the Market or changes to policies and things like that. Without going into, you don't have to go into full detail, but have you seen side of you here? Have you seen changes in policies and things that you need to look out for now that we're in the world of COVID Yeah.

So I have definitely seen an increase in group policies that have an exclusion not only for work related injuries, but for work related illnesses. And I had not seen that prior to the beginning of 2021. I would have said, look, not covering work related injuries, it's the exception to the rule. I would say now it's still the exception, but it's not uncommon. And I anticipate seeing more and more in that, more and more of that as time goes on. And I also anticipate that with the carriers making product changes, I think that we're going to start seeing Covid as part of the application process and as a pre existing exclusion. Right. So now, right now there's none of that in place. So if you've had Covid, you're still covered. Right. What had happened early in the COVID space was they were asking, you know, have you been exposed, have you tested positive? And if the answer was yes, it was a health hold, meaning they were saying, we're not doing this. Come back to us in 30 days. And every 30 days we were finding ourselves going back and doing that. In order for carriers to make real product changes, they have to go state by state. So right now we're not seeing it. I would be shocked if in the next two years it's not a big deal.

You know, my wife is a practicing physician and I know that when we went into looking at disability, it was kind of told to us again and again that there are different policies for men and for women. Right. And different things to consider. Is that still the case or, you know, and what are like maybe some of the key ones that people should be looking out for.

So it's not so much that there are different policies for men and women, it's that it's priced differently. So disability insurance, more expensive for women, life insurance, more expensive for men. Not quite as sexist as it appears at first glance. It's based in actuarial data. Women have historically, across all fields, left the workforce more often than men because of injury or illness. Men have consistently died younger and more successfully at their own hands. So that's really where the price gradient comes in. I would say from a timing issue, it's a little bit different for men and women. And one of the things that I try to explain for women is the carriers really don't want to cover pregnancy issues, and they're looking for reasons not to cover us. The goal for women really should be to get both disability and life insurance in place before the first time they try to get pregnant. We all know that as women put off childbearing, right, because of education, because of jobs and all that stuff, that we have a lot of miscarriages and a lot of physicians have to visit their neighborhood REI doc and get some help, right? But the carriers view infertility, they view multiple miscarriages, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia. All the things that can happen are going to make it a little bit harder for women to get good coverage. And especially as an OB GYN that is very near and dear to my heart, I will boast for just one moment that when I started doing this, any woman that had a C section would not get future pregnancies covered. And I went ballistic. I was like, this is not an abnormal outcome of pregnancy for a lot of women. It's standard of care if they're breach, if they have multiples. It's been five years, and I have five of the six traditional carriers that are willing to cover future pregnancies, and they just say they won't cover complications of future pregnancies or of future C sections. That's at least fair, right? So I'm very proud of that. But I'm still kind of banging my head against the wall with some infertility stuff. So I do think that there's a timing issue. And also with life insurance, gestational diabetes can double to quadruple the cost of life insurance for women. So I think it's really important that women get this stuff as early as possible.

I mean, you talked a lot about timing here. When. I mean, I hear this all about the time as well. Like, when is the ideal time for someone to get disability insurance? Is it during residency? Fellowship afterwards? Like. Like, what do you. How do you counsel people on that?

This is going to sound really trite, but you're never going to be younger, and you're most likely never going to be healthier than you are at any given moment. So when I'm speaking with people, you know, it's. There's not really a good reason to wait. I would say that in training would be ideal because there are trainee discounts that are available with most of the carriers that we can only take advantage of while you're in training. So once you bake in a discount, it's going to stay with you forever. So simply getting it in training is going to make it less expensive. You're younger, there are discounts and that can keep, you know, keep with you moving forward. Additionally, they have specific packages for trainees that, interestingly enough, sometimes as an attending, you can't even qualify for that much. So in perspective, residents everywhere, doesn't matter how much money you make, what benefits you have, everyone can get a $5,000 a month package. Okay, there are some exceptions. When you become an Attending, the way that the carriers will dictate how much benefit you qualify for is actually based on internal algorithms that look at how much money do you make, what benefits do you get, and who pays for them. Right. Because of taxation, again. And they spit out a number. It's not like you can say to me, Steph, I want $15,000 of benefit and I'm willing to pay for it. If numbers don't work out that way, they don't work out that way. And again, I'll use myself as an example. I didn't do it when I was a resident. I either don't remember learning about it or didn't do it at the time. And my first year as an attending was when I got my first policy and I only qualified for 3,800amonth. And it was more expensive because I missed out on the opportunity of having a residency discount. So not only did I not get as much as I should have, I was paying more dollar for dollar. So, you know, for the perfect time, it really is when you're in training, it's when the carriers are most lenient and it's when it's going to be the least expensive.

Okay, and what does your life look like today, now that you're running this business? It's obviously, you're not, you're not clinical anymore.

No.

But, yeah. What does that look like for you?

So Monday through Friday, I am in my office. I pretty much am on the phone from 8 or 9 in the morning until about 5 o' clock in the afternoon. This year, 2021, I gave up nights and weekends. I have brought in other brokers and mentored them and taught them how to do what we do so that I don't have to do that anymore. I feel like I've kind of paid my dues. It's really nice to be able to sleep in my own bed every night and not take call. Quite honestly, I really miss the or. I would give almost anything to be back there. But admittedly, my life is probably better now than it would have been if I had kept in the trajectory that I was on, just because I was one of those physicians that said yes to everything and, you know, took a ton of call, you know, so in that sense, it's very different. Being a business owner has its own. You know, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but being a business owner has its own stresses that are way different than when I was a clinician. I mean, I'm not as worried about getting sued, but I have the weight of all of my employees on my shoulders, you know, especially with COVID Thankfully, we're based right outside of Philadelphia, and when we started our company, we were worried about snow storms, Right. So we had set everybody up with laptops and the ability to work from home. Who would have thought that it would be the pandemic that would take everybody out of the office? But we had kind of already a work from home system in place. But worrying about all of my employees weighs pretty heavily. You know, making sure that we're keeping the lights on and, you know, people having work to do is definitely a different concern than I ever had before. And I'm learning a lot as I go. You know, I'm not sure how you did it, but I read everything I can about being a good CEO and being a good boss and how do you scale. Scale up and. Right. And all these business things that I never learned. I didn't take a single business class or economics class in college. Everything was, get to med school, get to med school, be a physician. And I'm learning all these new things. And really, interestingly, I'm learning a ton more about medicine. I mean, it seems kind of. I don't know what the right word is, but in reviewing people's histories and health stuff, I'm learning a ton. And I love the ability to be able to advocate for people and really talk medicine. It's a little bit frustrating because community medicine and insurance medicine are really different, but it's really nice to still be learning. I still feel like a physician even though I'm not clinical. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, what kind of skills that, you know, as a physician that you've gained do you think translate well into running this really successful business?

I think most importantly, I've always wanted to take care of people. Right. That's why most of us go into medicine. And I feel like, as an insurance broker, I get to advocate for our clients, and I get to still take care of people. And on the Back end. I had mentioned before, you know, for most insurance brokers, when somebody goes on claim, right, so they're injured or sick or injured, and now they can't do their job, they're pretty hands off. It's kind of like, okay, now it's between you and the company. And what I'm able to do, having lived through it and gone through the whole process, is actually be able to. To take care of people and hold their hand and get them the papers that they need and give them some insight, like, okay, make sure that you get all your medical records and they're in one place, and make sure that you're doing what they need you to do. Right? So I still get to be a caretaker. I love teaching residents. I still get to educate people. I mean, I view myself as an educator. I really don't view myself as an insurance broker. And I realize that some of it is semantics, but I love being able to teach people, right. And educate people on something that may be new to them. So it may not be patient care, but it's education nonetheless. And I still get to do that. And I would say those are two of the biggest things that I take from being a physician that I've translated here. And the same thing for our employees. You know, there's a big push now that you're not supposed to talk about businesses like family. You're supposed to talk about businesses like a sports team, and you're supposed to be coaching and how many dysfunctional families are there? But I still view all my employees like they're my family. And I want to make sure that they're being well taken care of and that we're doing what we need to do to make them better people, too.

I mean, I know your story is it's going to resonate with a lot of people, and they're going to want to reach out to you. Where's the best place that people can reach you? You also mentioned a Facebook group. Can you talk all about those things again?

Yep. So for physicians who have had to leave medicine because of injury or illness, really the best thing is just to reach out to me on Facebook. And I didn't think ahead of time to have a pseudonym, so I really am Stephanie Pearson. So you just have to look for me and friend me, and I ask a couple of questions because I really want to keep it a safe place. But that's the Facebook piece. As far as our business again, Pearson Rabbits. It's P E A R S O N R, as in Roger A V as in Victor, I T as in Tom, z as in zebra.com. so you can find me there. My email is stephanie@pearsonrabbits.com the office number is 610-658-3251 and I am pretty easily accessible. I'm probably more accessible now than I was as a clinician.

I know that some people are going to want to reach out to you. I think this is a great example of someone who took a tough life situation, obviously made lemonade out of it, and you create your own business and now you're a successful physician entrepreneur and you've started one of my favorite types of businesses, which is, I mean basically physician led businesses that are helping other physicians. And I just absolutely love that. And thanks for sharing your story with us today. And honestly, like, just congrats on all you're doing and all the strong work. So thank you, thank you.

Thank you so much. And again, I'm so excited to be part of the Passive Income MD family and look forward to doing more stuff with you guys.

All right, great, thanks. Talk to you again soon.

Thanks Peter.

Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe. Are you part of our community yet? Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. You can join us on our Facebook group Passive Income Docs and you can always learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.