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Welcome to Dental Unscripted, a podcast brand that meets doctors wherever they are at in their professional journey. We talk about starting a practice, buying a practice, and running a practice. We cover a lot of ground on this channel!

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Stephanie Pearson didn't plan on becoming a disability insurance expert. She was an OBGYN until a difficult delivery injured her shoulder, leaving her with permanent nerve damage and never cleared to operate again. She was terminated the day her medical leave ran out, and that's when she learned firsthand how unprepared most doctors are for exactly this scenario. It's why we asked her, now co-founder of Pearson Ravitz, to walk us through the coverage every dental practice owner needs before they're the one finding out the hard way.

Are You Aware of The Ninety Day Gap

Ninety days without income can really bury a practice owner. That's the standard waiting period on a personal disability policy, long enough to bury a doctor who assumed the bank's minimum insurance requirement was the whole conversation. This breakdown comes from a Dental Unscripted conversation between Michael Dinsio, Paula Quinn, and Stephanie Pearson, co-founder of Pearson Ravitz, part of Earned Wealth Group.

1. Personal Disability Insurance Covers Your Income, Not Your Business Overhead

Personal disability insurance replaces your income you'd lose if you couldn't practice dentistry, nothing more. Pearson cited a study that said dentists carry roughly the same on the job injury risk as construction workers, thanks to the awkward positions and repetitive motion the job demands day to day. Most carriers cap income replacement around sixty to seventy percent, and the highest earners often get penalized with lower participation limits, which pushes them toward non traditional carriers like Lloyd's of London.

2. Business Overhead Insurance Keeps the Doors Open Without You in it.

Business overhead insurance is a separate policy, and it exists to pay everyone and everything except you. Pearson said it typically covers staff wages, lease payments, utilities, and up to three business loans, including the note you used to buy the practice. The waiting period is shorter too, usually thirty days instead of ninety, which is why she recommends keeping at least two months of overhead in savings to bridge that gap.

• Personal disability: replaces your income, waiting period around ninety days.

• Business overhead: pays staff, lease, utilities, and up to three loans, waiting period around thirty days.

• Life insurance: pays off the practice loan and protects your family's estate if you die.

3. Life Insurance Covers the Debt on a Practice You Own, The Bank Won't Forgive Loans even in Death.

Any loan over a million dollars will almost always require a life insurance policy tied directly to that note. Pearson explained that without it, the bank still gets paid, just from your estate instead of your business, which means your family absorbs the loss you were trying to protect them from. She recommends matching the policy term to the loan term, usually five to ten years, and keeping a separate personal policy to cover the household.

4. "Convertible Term" Life Insurance Locks In Your Health Class Before Your Body Does

Convertible term life insurance lets you take a portion of an existing term policy and convert it to permanent coverage later, using the health class you qualified for when you first bought it. Pearson called this the closest thing to guaranteed future insurability, since a diagnosis down the road can't touch the rate you locked in years earlier. She pushes dentists to buy their first policy during residency, when carrier discounts are available and their health class is as clean as it will ever be.

5. The Move to Make Before Your Next Closing

If you're mid acquisition or already own the practice, confirm you have personal disability, business overhead, and life insurance running as three separate policies, not one doing triple duty. Pull your last two years of P&L statements now, since carriers use them to set your business overhead limits, and get that quote moving before it becomes the thing holding up your closing.