In this episode of Beyond Bitewings, recorded live from the Southwest Dental Conference, Herb Ford from Brown and Brown (formerly Wallace Specialty) joins Ash to discuss the common misconceptions about insurance coverage for dental practices. They discuss the critical differences between general liability, cyber, and professional liability insurance, emphasizing that many practice owners may be less protected than they realize. Herb offers real-world examples of how insufficient or misunderstood coverage can leave practices exposed to significant risks, especially with increasing cyber-attacks and the complexities around group benefits and business operations.

Herb also talks about the role of umbrella insurance and how it offers additional liability protection—but not for every type of coverage, such as property damage. The episode provides practical advice on how and why dental professionals should consider group policies, disability insurance for staff, and key person coverage to maintain practice continuity. The discussion wraps up with tips for protecting both personal and business assets and recommendations for addressing gaps in current insurance strategies.

To connect with Herb, you can call him at: 972-663-5195

Or email him at herb {at} bbrown.com

Key Topics Discussed:

• General liability, cyber, and professional liability insurance: what’s covered and what isn’t
• Cybersecurity, cyber insurance, and why IT providers are not a substitute for insurance
• The purpose and limits of umbrella insurance for dental practices and individuals
• Group benefits for dental practice staff, including health, disability, and life insurance
• Disability, business overhead, and payroll protection insurance to maintain business continuity
• The importance of entity professional liability coverage for practices with multiple associates
• Business interruption and extra expense insurance for property-related disruptions
• Employee dishonesty and theft coverage
• Practical advice for practice owners on assessing and improving current insurance coverage

Welcome to Beyond Bite Wings, the business side of dentistry, brought to you by Edwards and Associates PC. Join us as we discuss how to build your dental practice, optimize your income, and plan for your future. This podcast is distributed with the understanding that Edwards and Associates PC is not rendering legal, accounting, or professional advice. Listeners should consult with their business advisors before acting on any of the information that is shared. At Edwards and Associates PC, our business is the business of dentistry. For help or more information, visit our website at eandassociates.com.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Beyond Bite Wings. I'm your host Ash, and in today's episode we have a very special guest. In fact, we're recording live here at the SWDC show with Herb. He's with Brown and Brown, which used to be known as Wallace Specialty. So Herb, how are we doing today?

Yeah, you know what, we are doing great today. As you mentioned, Ash, we're here at the Southwest Dental Conference. We've got people walking around. It's actually pretty lively compared to a lot of other years, and that's really exciting. But yeah, you know, like we were talking about earlier, I think there's just a lot of, you know, misunderstanding about what some of the insurance people have and what it actually covers is. And that's normal because insurance is complicated, right? And so, for example, almost everybody has general liability insurance, right? That's something that if you're a practice owner, you, you're required to have it by a lease. Every lender is going to require you to have it, right? You know, and it's commonly thought of as being like slip and fall insurance, but because of that word general in front of it, you can kind of think it's like, oh, it's this all-encompassing liability, right, type of coverage.

Right.

But that's unfortunately not the case because there's a lot of other types of liability coverages that don't apply to it, right? And so, one of those is like cyber liability.

That's right.

Right? So, like, if, for example, if somebody were to be— if they had a data breach and their patient information was stolen, and then there was a lawsuit based on those— that incident that happened, you need cyber liability coverage to protect you from that. And that's not always something that people know because they're like, oh, well, I have general liability insurance, like, I'm good to go.

Right.

No. So, general liability doesn't cover all types of liability insurance. That's you have professional liability, which is your malpractice insurance. And there's employment practices liability for like wrongful termination lawsuits, things like that. So I think that's one big thing that isn't— that's commonly misunderstood is that general liability, you know, what you typically have as a practice owner, it doesn't cover cyber situations.

That's right. And I'm glad you actually brought that up because recently I actually had a phone call with a client who was attacked. I mean, his POS system was hacked into, and, you know, he had an IT company on his, you know, that he was using. He also thought his general liability insurance would cover for such a loss until later when he found out that it didn't.

Yeah.

And in fact, even when he called his IT company, they said, oh, we don't cover, you know, cybersecurity, like we cover the other stuff. And it was crazy. And I could completely understand where he was coming from. He was like, well, I'm paying all this money every month and I thought this is what I'm getting. But in reality, when something like that, that kind of an unfortunate event, when it happened to him, he was just flustered. He didn't know what to do.

Yeah. And you know what? This is a common misunderstanding that we see all the time as well, right? When we're talking to people that are practice owners, You know, we want to talk to them and educate them about cyber insurance because, you know, typically there's probably, you know, an IT provider. You know, maybe that IT provider also provides cybersecurity, which is its own thing, right?

Right.

Like, that's depending on what you're doing with cybersecurity, because cybersecurity isn't cyber insurance, because cybersecurity can help, you know, it's— that's like being proactive, right? Like, we're making sure that, like, look, if We don't want anything to come in. And if something does happen, then they're there to help with like the incident response plan, making sure that things get shut down. You know, you isolate the issue. And then the aftermath of that is where cyber insurance comes in, right? And so that's where probably that client was like misunderstanding about, okay, well, I thought I was, like you mentioned, I'm paying all this money for the cybersecurity, something bad happened. You know, they were probably able to limit how bad it was because of the actions that they took in place. But now it's like, well, okay, I have to notify my patients about the breach. We have to credit monitor all those people. And if anything happens, like, you know, who's going to pay for those expenses? And that's what the cyber insurance policy is for.

And, you know, there's a lot of different levels to that. Like a cyber insurance policy itself, there are standalone cyber policies, and those are usually the most comprehensive. So, it's, you know, it's its own policy, you know, provides the liability coverage. And for those who aren't aware of it, whenever you hear liability coverage, just think about that's insurance coverage if I get sued for X reason, right? So, cyber liability, that's insurance coverage for being able to pay attorney expenses if I get sued for a cyber incident. And so, it covers cyber liability, it covers the data breach, the expenses that are involved, and also it covers business interruption insurance.

Mm-hmm.

Which is not something— so, you probably have a property policy. It's usually called like a business owner's policy that includes business interruption usually, but for property damage. It wouldn't cover it for a cyber-related incident, but a cyber policy would, right? And so, again, kind of going back to that first question and that first things that we were talking about before, where it's like, what do people not really know that they don't have or think that they have and they're not sure of it? This is one of those where, you know, there are a lot of things that insurance policies can cover, but part of it's that you have to have the right policy to do it. Not every policy is going to cover every single situation.

So what I'm hearing from you, Herb, is that when you're getting insurance, you shouldn't just think about what's the bare minimum you need to sign up for, you know, to cover your legal bases, but also, you know, real coverage from you know, real attacks or anything that may go wrong? Because it does happen.

Oh, absolutely. And honestly, so I will say that I don't have any statistical data with me today, but in my day-to-day experience, we're seeing more cyber-related attacks or incidents than property claims.

Wow.

Right? So it's more like we think of it more as being like, okay, when is this going to happen versus if it's going to happen. And it's important to make sure that when you're looking at insurance, how are you evaluating it, right? Are you just looking at what your overall premium is? Are you comparing that to somebody else's premium? Well, how do you know that they have the same thing that you have?

Well, actually, you're right. That's probably what they're doing, right?

Comparing their premiums to someone else's. Yeah, well, absolutely. You know, it's like, oh, well, I was talking to my, you know, to my colleague who owns a practice, you know, a couple streets down, and they're like, well, they're paying X. Well, it's like, What do they have? You know, do they have less operatory rooms than you do? You know, like, there's all these different factors that go into it. And I understand how easy it is to kind of dive into that, especially like you do. You turn on a TV and you're going to see commercials for the Limu, Emu, State Farm, all of those things. And it makes it feel really transactional. But insurance is much deeper than just a transactional thing because it's how you can protect yourself whenever something happens.

So, I agree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's also cover a little bit, uh, or touch upon a little bit on umbrella insurance. What is that?

Good question. So, umbrella insurance— so there are 2 different types of umbrella insurance. There's commercial umbrella and there's a personal umbrella. Okay, so personal umbrella goes over your personal insurance, like your home and your auto, and then commercial would go over your commercial-related property coverage or liability.

Um, okay.

Coverage. And so what umbrella does is that it is an excess amount of coverage to what you currently have. So for example, most practice owners have a general liability, like general liability coverage, maybe of around $1 million per occurrence and a $2 million aggregate. An umbrella of $1 million provides that additional million If they've gone over their limit in coverage. So it's not something that's necessarily going to just provide you with— it's like, oh, well, I didn't have that type of insurance before, and now because I have an umbrella, I'm covered. No, the way that the umbrellas work is that you have to exhaust or use up all of the coverage that you currently have in a specific area, and then the umbrella kicks in afterwards.

Hmm.

And it's not for all types of insurance either. So like one thing that people may not realize is that it doesn't affect property coverage at all, right? So like if you have a practice, let's say that you like insure the property coverage at $500,000, and then you purchase a million-dollar umbrella.

Mm-hmm.

And you know, let's say the worst thing happens, right? Like a worst-case scenario, place is gone. You're gonna have to rebuild and, you know, repair, repurchase all your equipment and everything else, and Look, everything costs more expensive today, you know, supplies, labor, bringing everything in. And it turns out that, okay, maybe it's going to be $600,000 to actually repair and replace everything. Well, you only have $500,000 in property coverage. Even though you have a million-dollar umbrella, that has nothing to do with property. So you're stuck with the $500,000. So the umbrella policy is just for liability coverage, and it's not even for all liability coverages. It's only for specific liability items.

So hopefully that kind of helps answer your question about like what is, you know, umbrella.

That's good to know, 'cause sometimes, you know, I feel like my clients, they get hit with these terms and they don't know what it is. They're, you know, thinking of it however they would see it.

Yeah.

They're thinking, oh, maybe, you know, he's talking about I've got a management company overseeing all these subsidiary companies. Maybe if I have the insurance through that management, then it's an umbrella insurance.

Right. You know what? You're absolutely right. There's a lot of times when people will talk to me and they're like, I want to have an umbrella policy. And I'm like, okay, what do you want it to do? Right? And they're like, oh, well, I want coverage for all of these different things. And it's like, okay, well, I can understand what you're thinking about because of like the idea of a physical umbrella and how that all works. But the actual umbrella policy is different than that.

Right?

And so, it's usually that, okay, hey, we need a couple different types and policies that cover multiple risks, right? And so then that way, it's, you have a comprehensive program. But I would try and steer away from the idea of using the term umbrella just because it's, you know, something that people will say, but they're again, kind of like, it's a good question that you brought up because not many people may understand the true meaning of the umbrella policy. Yeah.

Now, on a personal level, specifically for dentists and other medical professionals, It would apply to them, no? Or something they should look into it.

Every dentist should have an umbrella policy. Realistically, anybody who owns a home and has, you know, multiple people driving should also have an umbrella policy. A personal umbrella policy goes over the auto liability limits and also the liability limits that you have on your homeowner's insurance. Or renter's insurance. But it's there to help protect your personal assets, right? The commercial umbrella, it's there to help protect commercial assets. That's why you create entities, right? To help separate those assets for asset protection. From the personal side, absolutely. Personal umbrella.

And it's usually, you want it to be at least 100% of your assets. Right. So, like, if you own a—

let's give some examples.

Right.

Of the personal assets.

Yeah. So, personal assets, right? That could be art. It could be bags, you know, like designer bags. It could be jewelry, watches, engagement rings.

So, watches, because I know my clients love watches.

I love watches.

Okay. There you go. Okay.

No, absolutely. You know, those are all different things that you can have insured. Right, even art, you know, family heirlooms that get passed down.

Right.

These are all different things that you can have on an insurance policy. And if they're stolen, or if something happens, then like, hope you can have coverage for that. But for the umbrella piece, that is for liability and lawsuits. And for the stories that we see, you know, the most oftentimes that the personal umbrellas are used is really whenever you start to have teen drivers.

Ah, okay.

You know, so my brother Alex, he works with a lot of our clients with their home and auto insurance, and he has this great— I mean, it's, it's unfortunate that it happened, but the story is unforgettable, right? So we work with an oral surgeon, um, and he gets the phone call from his daughter that she was in an accident, right? She's, you know, 16 and a half, almost 17. And they're gonna go to the hospital. Now, she's gonna be okay. Fortunately, everyone like health-wise is fine. I'm glad to hear that. But what happens though is that, you know, a client, the oral surgeon, right, he drops whatever he can. He's going over there to see his daughter, to see the people that are there. And he realizes that, you know, he's left, right, you know, in the middle of the day, he's wearing his scrubs.

His scrubs have Dr. So-and-so on it. He's there, you know, everyone's kind of okay, you know, everyone's just getting checked out, nobody's, you know, seriously injured. And then, you know, the person that was hit, you know, suddenly it's a little more like, ooh, ow, you know, you can't see me here. But they're, you know, like—

A man wearing scrubs showing up to the scene.

Seeing the scrubs, showing up to the scene, being like, that's the dad and everything. Like, you know, people People, the general populace, look at doctors in a different view, right? And they see dollar signs, right? I mean, if you drive on any highway, you're seeing an injury lawyer ad. It's right in their face too, right?

That's right.

And so, they think, you know, it could potentially could be easy money, or at least try to, you know, be able to potentially receive anything. And so, you know, it's really important that dentists, doctors in general, they have personal umbrellas. to be able to help protect their assets, right? Because you never know, something can happen, you know, whether it's your fault or not. You know, it's important to have, especially because there's a lot of people out there that are driving that, that don't have— that either don't have insurance or they have state minimums. And so, you know, the state minimum for coverage is like $25,000 per accident. Most cars are worth more than that.

More than that. That's true, that's true. Right?

And then especially if it's a multi-car accident, then like, you know, it's— those things get used up really quickly. So it's very important to have that.

Okay, the other thing I wanted to talk to you about would be like group policies, right? Especially for our clients, business owners, you know, because the clinic is a business, right? And they have employees. And if they're, you know, at a point where, you know, um, their staff are asking for more than just compensation. They want to include some benefit packages. They're thinking of, oh, maybe we should start offering disability insurance, health insurance, life insurance to my staff, including myself. You know, me as the owner, I'm, let's say, on the payroll. What are some of the questions to ask the people they're thinking of working with? What should they be on the to look out, aside from just great premiums.

So, is this for the practice owner who's looking to offer coverage to their employees?

That's right, yeah. That's it.

So, one of the things is probably to figure out is how many people are interested.

Less than 50.

What?

Less than 50 employees.

No, no, no, but that's what I mean though, is like, of those employees, if it's less than 15 employees, how many of them are actually gonna be— Utilize it, okay. Because, and that's something that, you know, It's not always an easy conversation, but it's an important one.

That's true.

Because there may be people who have their spouses and they're using their coverage, especially because like with 15 or less employees, the hard thing with health insurance or group benefits in general is that you don't have enough people to get the law of large numbers and have lower rates.

That's right.

Right? So if you have a spouse, or if like one of your employees has a spouse that's working at a larger company and they're receiving benefits, Odds are that you're not going to be able to get better premium than those options.

That's right.

Now, something that offering group benefits can be really helpful though is that if you have people that are interested in PPOs or HSA health insurance plans, that's one of the best ways to get access to them.

Yeah, because the Obamacare, they're all HMOs.

Right. They're all HMOs. There may be like a couple HSAs that are available. But again, they're HMOs. And, you know, I'll be— to be fair, there are more people that are taking, you know, that are providers that are taking HMO than there used to be, right? But it can still be a pain, right? Overall, you're not necessarily choosing who you get to go to. So a couple questions that I would think about are, okay, hey, how many people are actually interested in this? What kind of plans are they interested in, right?

That's right.

And getting an idea, it's like, hey, do you You know, is being a part of a PPO really important? And, you know, is anybody coming up for any potential procedures? Right? Because then that could be a really great sticking point for keeping your employees.

That's right.

Right? Like, you know, that's one of the best things that benefits is there for, because the cost of having to hire somebody new, train some— train that person, hope that they stay, usually ends up costing more than paying for health insurance benefits or other types of benefits. When it comes to like short-term disability or long-term disability, to being able to offer those, most insurance companies are going to require at least 3 to 5 employees to be on the plan. So if you don't have 3 or 5 employees that are willing to be a part of it, then you're not going to be able to really have it offered.

Mm-hmm.

And part of that again is just that the insurance— I mean, it's still a business. The insurance companies are going to have to have a couple people on it because the odds are at least 1 or 2 of them is going to need it.

I mean, what if the business owner, the business owner's wife, and 2 kids are already on payroll and then there's more?

Well, so that all works, right? If they're all on the payroll, they're counted as employees, right? Then they're eligible. So, like, they'd have to enroll individually, right? But still. And then the other thing though is that with some of those, like when there's less employees, for those group benefits, like not health insurance but life, dental, vision, short-term disability? They're usually pretty inexpensive because there's, you know, for a practice, you know, the majority of employees are under 40. Yeah, realistically, right? And those are usually healthier years for a lot of people. And so being able to offer that coverage as being like, hey, look, we're gonna provide that cost to you, or like, we're gonna eat the cost and we're gonna provide that as a benefit. That goes a long way with people, right? I feel like you're gonna be more likely to keep a hygienist or a dental assistant if they're gonna have to leave.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, maintaining your existing staff. Let's say your important service providers like hygienists or associate dentists, right? Let's say they went on a trip, injured their hand while hiking, right? They come back and now, you know, they're in a pickle.

Yeah.

You know, how does disability insurance come to play?

Yeah, so, um, there's 2 types. There's short-term disability and long-term disability, right? Short-term disability can start providing benefit checks to an employee after 2 weeks, and it can provide coverage up to 90 days in most cases. Okay, so, you know, in that scenario, like someone goes on a trip, they either go hiking and they trip and they fall, or You know, they go skiing over the winter, right? They hurt their leg, something that happens. These things happen all the time.

Right.

Short-term disability is able to help provide an income to, to the hygienist or the dental assistant, you know, whoever it is that's a part of the staff that has that coverage. So then that way they're at least able to continue to make something during the time that they're not working. And at the same time, though, it's a, you know, that warm feeling that they have of like, oh, I'm so glad that I'm working somewhere. that has this as a benefit.

Right.

Right. It's a, you know, it's a lot more challenging when, you know, a practice doesn't have those things in place or, you know, they don't have a way to handle people leaving, you know, whether it's like PTO or like maternity leave or other different things. And so it's important that, you know, that can be there to help provide that stickiness, you know, in terms of being able to like keep employees and everything. You know, feel good.

Yeah, and especially in our world, I think it, it should be the most important thing to consider, especially when you're growing. Because, you know, when I have conversations with my clients and they're growing really rapidly, they're thinking about how do we add more ops, right? How do we put in more dental chairs? You know, how do I hire more hygienists or more associates? But they're not thinking of how to keep them, because at the end of the day, you're not really selling retail products. You're selling services provided by these people. So if they're not happy, what does that translate to?

Well, absolutely. And it's also relationships, right? I've gone— I purposely make sure that I go to the same hygienist every single time, right? Because I like her, right? And, you know, she like— so the practice that I go to, they're actually opening up a second location and she's gonna move to the second location. I'm gonna go even though it's a little farther away from it That's right. Away from me because I enjoy that, you know. But like, if I'm going somewhere where it's constantly rotating with new people, it's a little bit less— it's harder for me to get, you know, to build that relationship with someone so that way it's somebody that I like to see whenever I'm going to the dentist. Because look, let's face it, not everybody likes going to the dentist. And so if you're able to be there and you know someone that you like is going to be there, then you're more likely to go, probably.

No, I agree.

Yeah. You know, that also brings up an interesting point though. Where, you know, we're talking about, you know, if you want to grow and it's important to have business continuity, right? Like if you're the main doctor that's there, you know, what happens if you're not able to be there?

Hmm.

Right? If something happens to you, right? There's different types of protection plans that are available for a practice owner that if they're disabled or if they're sick, that then the practice can receive money to keep it going.

It's fantastic that you brought this up. We actually did an episode where we talked about succession planning and we did not touch upon this. So I'm glad you're bringing this up. So let's, let's talk about it more. Okay, so you're telling me there's an insurance package out there?

Multiple.

Multiple. Interesting. Okay, is it just for the owner or for other service providers as well?

Good question. So it is, it's going to be based on who's generating revenue.

Got it.

Right?

Okay.

And so it may be able to apply to hygienists. It certainly can apply to any doctors or associates.

Okay.

But from there, you know, like if, you know, there's another pathway in terms of, you know, like if your office manager is your number one go-to person and they do everything in the practice, which I know that there are a lot of offices that do that. Collections as well. Shout out to them because they deserve all the credit in the world. And if they're not there someday because something happens to them, then the whole place is in disarray. What happens there, right?

Yeah.

You can get key person disability or life insurance with— for people. So then that way the company receives that benefit to potentially hire somebody new and help pay for the expenses for that. So those are options that are available for practices as well. And those are Those are less expensive than like your personal disability coverage that probably a lot of doctors are thinking about. It's like, oh, well, that's already expensive. But look, for what it is that you're saving in terms of being able to keep your practice going, make sure that, you know, the wheels don't fall off when somebody's gone.

Okay. So what is that coverage called? It's not loss of income, right?

Yeah, good question. So, so there's a couple different types. There is the business overhead expense plan. That's a form of disability coverage that's owned by the business, and it provides a reimbursement check to the business for expenses that they have. Like, it covers rent, utilities, payroll for staff.

Payroll too?

It covers payroll. Yeah, even the ability for you to hire somebody else to come into the practice. If it's the— So like a temp or an associate? Yeah, a temp or an associate. It provides them with money to bring them in for a salary.

become tenants' associate or a dentist, right?

Yeah, exactly. And then there's also the Payroll Protection Plan, which that's actually a newer product, and I really like it because it works for really short, quick needs, right? So like if somebody's going to be out for 90 days or 60 days, it comes into play, right? It only takes 2 weeks and then it can be activated. And it's not just for injuries, it also It applies for licensing issues.

Okay.

And then also, like, if somebody's traveling out of the country and they have travel issues, right? So like, there may be something that happens and like you're not able to fly back for a couple weeks. Well, how are you gonna, you know, how can you get back to your practice if that happens, right? Who's gonna be taking care of it? That payroll protection plan is able to provide your office with a quick reimbursement to help pay and bring somebody in until you're able to get back.

Yeah, as soon as you said Payroll Protection Plan, my mind went to PPP.

Yeah, that's their little logo. Yeah, or like the— yeah, the acronym.

We're not done with them yet.

Yeah, no, it's not alone.

Oh, but anyways, yeah, uh, I digress. But, uh, thank you, that's awesome. Any other things that you think we should touch upon? Um, common misnomers about insurance?

Yeah, you know what, I think one of the biggest things that is not talked about very often, but also that there's, there's not a lot of education about.

That's right.

Is professional liability for the practice. So if you're— so if there are multiple providers or associates in a practice, most of the time what we see is that every provider has their own malpractice insurance, right? They have their own policy, but there's not necessarily something for the practice if the practice entity gets named in a lawsuit. Now, the owner doctors are probably thinking, oh, well, they have their own— the associates have their own malpractice insurance. Why do I have to worry about that when they have their own?

Yeah.

Well, it's your practice entity that's named in a lawsuit. Even if it's not you who treated the patient or that the issue is resolved around, your entity is named and you have to at least pay for attorney fees to be able to say that it wasn't us. So who's gonna pay for the attorney fees? To be able to say that it wasn't us. Well, that is what professional liability coverage for an entity is for, and almost every malpractice company offers it, and it's super inexpensive, right? I mean, it's like a couple hundred dollars for an entire year.

Wow.

If you have— and it's all based on the number of associates that you have.

I've been a part of that scenario, so I'm glad you brought it up.

Oh, really?

Yeah, where the associate, lack of a better way of putting it, messed up.

Yeah, okay.

And then the patient went after the practice owner.

Right, because it's their name on it.

Yeah, exactly. That's what they thought.

Yeah, no, and that's what happens, right? I mean, like, if you think about it from the patient's perspective, right, it's like, I'm going to your practice.

Oh no, I completely get it.

Right, you know, especially like if you have, you know, one or two different associates that are there and, you know, maybe, maybe that person sees one, maybe they see two, but like, but they know it's your practice.

That's true.

So, so yeah, so that's one thing that I think that, you know, is a really good nugget for people to take away with, right, is just understanding. So like, if you have multiple providers or multiple associates, make sure that you have professional liability coverage for, for your entity. And then what you— the, the next step after that is making sure that there's what's called vicarious liability for those providers, which basically just says your entity is covered if something happens from those associates. So, it's kind of like a little bit of a 2-step, but it's, it's really important to be able to have.

Awesome.

Besides that, you know, we touched on business interruption insurance or business continuity. You know, a lot of property policies, they include business interruption insurance for when property damage happens. And, you know, I think what's important there is what it can cover. Right, right. So like, if you have a scenario where your practice is, you know, there's too much damage that's, that's gone on, and you're not going to be able to practice there for several weeks, couple months, maybe.

The pump went wrong. I mean, went bad. There's flooding everywhere.

Yeah, water damage. You know, like in the winter, this happens all the time, right? With water, especially in the Texas area. Or it could be from a fire. Or, you know, we just had— we, you know, there's a client of ours in California where they didn't have the fire, but their neighbor in the same building had a fire.

Oh, I see.

And then they had damage that went into their practice from it. And they're not gonna be able to practice in there for the next 4 weeks because they've gotta clean everything and they've gotta make sure that, you know, all the smoke's been taken out of the room, you know, all these different things. And like all of that cleanup has a cost to it. And then also there's the huge cost of, well, now I don't have anybody in my chairs for 4 weeks. What am I gonna do? Like, that's a huge hit to anybody's practice and their income. So the business interruption insurance, a solid policy will include that and what's called extra expense coverage. So the business interruption piece is what provides the practice with the loss of business income. And so what that means basically is that they're gonna do a financial review of your books and take a look at your schedule and say, okay, hey, look, you work 4 days a week.

These are the patients that you had scheduled based on everything in the past. This is typically what you would make. Here's the coverage for that loss of income. The extra expense option, or what that feature does, is that then it allows you to find a temporary space and purchase equipment to then temporarily see patients before your practice is ready to go.

You would have to purchase equipment? Your— and they'll cover—

Well, if you have to, if your prop— if your regular practice is unable to be used and you can't bring in your equipment when you go to a temporary place, the extra expense coverage will allow you to purchase additional equipment to fill in your temp space.

And we're talking about dental chairs as well?

Well, we're talking about making sure that you're able to come back to work and see patients. Those things are really important.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, those, those, those, uh, machines, they, they cost a pretty penny. Some of them, they do. CBCT.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's business income and extra expenses. It's something that's important to have. And not every policy has it.

Okay.

Right. That's something that's important on being able to, to work with somebody who understands what your risks are. Right. Well, if something happens, you know, do you have a policy that's going to protect you for, you know, because it's just a general business policy or is it something that works for me as Being a dentist.

Oh, that's awesome.

Right? You know, I mean, there's even, there's even coverage for employee theft, right? Like if somebody's stealing from the practice. Now nobody wants to think about that.

1 in 6 offices are victims of embezzlement. It's actually more common than people think.

And there's, you know, a good policy has coverage for that. Most of them have some of it, but it's like $5,000 in coverage or $10,000 in coverage.

That's usually way more than that.

It's the actual expense that happens when somebody finds out. I mean, we were— we had a client of ours who, you know, they had an employee who worked there for maybe like 6 to 9 months. He stole over $40,000. 6 to 9 months? Just 6 to 9 months.

Wow, that's insane. The ones I've seen, usually these are employees that have been with the practice for a while, right, to the point where the business owner completely trust this person. Absolutely. And all of a sudden they see them driving in in nicer cars, carrying nicer purses, right?

And they're thinking they're going on vacation.

They're going on—

yeah, also everyone should be able to go on vacation. No, they should.

But, right, but you know, but yeah, yeah, it's like, where exactly are you going, right? But yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Well, thank you so much for being on our episode today, Herb. You know, these are some great topics— I mean, points points that you raised. I learned a lot. I'm sure our audience learned a lot. And you know what, I think what sets you apart is how long you've been in this industry and how knowledgeable you are. Like, every time I know when I have a question, like, I reach out to you, and then including Robert from our firm as well. So, um, now if, if one of our listeners are interested in, you know, um, learning more from you, um, how should they reach out to you?

Yeah, thank you, Ash. So, best ways to get ahold of me are either through LinkedIn or email.

Okay.

So, I'm trying to be active on LinkedIn. We'll see how long I'm able to be consistently good at that. But email is going to be herb, H-E-R-B as in boy, .ford like the car, @b as in boy brown.com. So, it's herb.brown.com. That's the email address. My direct office number is 972-663-5195. If you give me a call and I'm not able to answer, please leave me a voicemail because otherwise I'm not going to know how important the call is. So that'll be wonderful.

LinkedIn, again, is super easy to be able to get in touch with me there. So those are the, those are the best ways. But Ash, I want to say thank you so much for being able to invite me on and being able to be here. It's a really good conversation. I enjoyed it. Nobody else can really see us, but I mean, we've been smiling back and forth the whole time. It's been absolutely wonderful.

That's awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for listening today. Be sure to subscribe to Beyond Bywings on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or reach out to us on our website. You can also shoot us an email at [email protected].