Dr. Adrianne Ross: Well, hello everyone. I'm your host, Dr. Adrianne Ross, and today on our show we have Dr. Richard Anderson, Chairman and CEO of the Doctor's Company. The Doctor's Company recently completed its landmark acquisition of ProAssurance, bringing two historic physician-founded organizations together to protect healthcare professionals all over the country. And for nearly three decades, PICA operated as a mutual company. Owned by its policy holders In 2009, PICA joined the ProAssurance family of companies, continuing to grow while maintaining its focus on podiatry. By becoming part of the doctor's company, PICA is once again an organization owned and led by physicians, reflecting many of the same principles upon which PICA was founded. PICA has been dedicated to protecting podiatric physicians, for 45 years. And today we want our insureds to hear more about the doctor's company. So Dr. Anderson, could you please tell us about this acquisition of ProAssurance PICA and why you felt that it's a great fit for the doctor's company?
Richard Anderson MD: Well thanks. First of all, it's a pleasure to pleasure to be with you today and appreciate the opportunity to to talk with you. I think PICA is a great fit for The Doctors Company just the way that ProAssurance is a great fit for the doctor's company. I mean, we were both companies were founded in nineteen seventy-six They have physician roots. TDC has always been a reciprocal and it continues to be a reciprocal to this day. And that's really been a defining advantage for us because we're a mission-driven company. The mission is to advance, protect, and reward the practice of good health care. And we we're allowed with that reciprocal structure owned by our members, no outside shareholders, in fact, no shareholders at all, the members just own the company. we're able to focus on the mission. Advance, protect, reward the practice of good medicine. And one of the ways that we try and make that a living mission is to focus on the concept of best imaginable service. best imaginable service the one hand it's easy to imagine what the definition means, but it's actually a term of art. And it it what it sa what it's saying is we want to provide service so good that our members would not think of going to any other insurance company because they simply wouldn't believe that anyone could do it better than we could do it. So, but that's an aspirational goal, right? Because we don't get to define the goal. Our members get to define the goal. And of course, it's a little bit like the pole ball thing. Every time you clear a hurdle, they just raise the bar. But that's good because that's a continuous challenge to meet the highest expectations of our members. And when we do that, when we succeed in the mission and providing best imaginable service, we believe that we enhance the environment in which medicine is practiced broadly, medical professions are practiced in the United States, and that we increase the likelihood of good outcomes in in medical care. So what does PRA do? What does what does PICA do? Well it it expands both our size and scale, so there are economies of scale, but it also expands our footprint across the medical profession. So we insure more of virtually every specialty, but we also now begin to insure specialties that we didn't insure previously that have been under the PRA group. and although we insure some podiatrists, you have a wonderful concentration of of podiatrists, and that we're excited about about being able to expand our service in in that area. So we're excited in every way possible.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: thank you for that. my next question would be along those lines, how important is physician ownership in today's practice environment?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, I think it's really critical. In other words, I I think I think that the history of the doctor's company and to some extent the history of PRA, the recent history of PRA, illustrates the point. TDC was was founded in in nineteen seventy-six. it hasn't had to change ownership, it hasn't had to change structure in all of these years. PRA was founded in the same year, but ultimately became a publicly traded company. And be once it became a publicly traded company, by law, by logic, the primary obligation was to the shareholders. And that's great until it isn't great. And when when PRA ran into some some problems and shareholders basically demanded some kind of change in structure. It opened the opportunity for us to actually buy the outstanding shares and take it private. But it's not just PRA that has run into the this kind of challenge. This is the fourth publicly traded company specializing in medical professional liability that the doctor's company has taken private. And there are lots of reasons why that's a strong model for the medical professions. It's hard with a with a long tail line like medical professional liability. It's very difficult to have to meet the quarterly expectations of Wall Street. whereas we don't we don't have those obligations. our obligation is to our members, our obligation is to our mission, our goal is to provide best imaginable service. We understand that insurance is a financial business, we understand. that if there's no margin, there's no mission. We understand that you have to be good at math to be in the business that we're in. but to do it with our sense of mission and drive and not responsive to quarterly meetings with Wall Street, I think has been a tremendous advantage for us.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: I'd agree, thank you. so healthcare is changing rapidly, in fact, as practices are becoming more complex, technology's advancing, and patient expectations are rising. what developments do you believe will have the greatest impact on physicians and their practices over the next five to ten years? Is it AI?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, yes, if I had to point to to a new influence that's going to have an enormous impact, I would certainly agree it it will be AI. and and the other one though is one that's already had an enormous influence and that's going to continue and continue and continue, and that's consolidation in healthcare delivery. I think that just as a general economic principle, once consolidation is unleashed, it doesn't stop. It just keeps going. And I think we've seen that, right? I mean there are more than there are more than sixty companies, probably more than that, that provide medical professional liability insurance in the United States. But the top ten carriers control eighty percent of the market. And so even there's we're seeing that consolidation. The doctors company is built to last. we we insure more physicians than any other company in the States. we're quite a bit larger than MedPro, not quite larger than Berkshire Hathaway. And it doesn't truthfully, it only sort of matters whether we're number one or number two in size. We have plenty of scale, and our goal is not it's not important that we be the biggest. It's important enough that we we have economies of scale and that we're large enough to meet the needs of all our members. What's really important is that we be the best. So that's that's my sense of consolidation. AI is something different. I think AI is an enormous challenge. It's an enormous opportunity. It isn't one that is readily ignored because it's it has it it as we can see the way it has powered through society and not only powered through society, but powered into the way we think about almost every issue. It's hard to think of an important issue that we end up discussing in which we don't contemplate what the effect of AI is going to be. The effect of AI in medicine is already obvious in some ways. It's a tremendous facilitator of medical research. We can do things now in a dry lab that would have taken years in a real lab to do, protein structures and things like that. so that part has been great. It's been helpful for things like scheduling. It's been helpful for things like The billing wars. In other words, it helps for the providers to be able to have AI helping them with billing. Unfortunately, of course, the the health insurers do the same, so there it helps them make denial, rapid denial of claims. And so you have this AI arms race that needs to work its way through. But it's been very good for scheduling. I think where it's had the most immediate impact on the on the clinical front is for practicing physicians who who are able to take advantage of ambient listening so that they're not spending every moment with the patient at their back while they're typing into a screen. Wow. And ambient listening really take takes care of that. I think right now we have a medical legal challenge because our AI in general, but healthcare in general Is moving much faster than the legal profession ever moves, or than the legal system ever moves. So right now, if you if an AI, if a physician uses AI to make help make a clinical decision, and AI gives a recommendation that's positive, in other words, the outcome is good, then everyone's happy. of course, that's great. But if AI gives a recommendation that's different than what the standard of care is or what physician's judgment might have otherwise been, then we have a real problem because in today's legal system, the physician has actually violated the standard of care to accept that recommendation. So again, if the outcome is positive, it's fine, but if the outcome is negative, then almost by definition the position's outside the standard of care. That's a real problem. And it will take our legal system, fifty states, a million juries, a million judges, a long time to sort that out. Having said that, it will, and if I had to make a prediction, I'd be pretty confident that five years from now, AI will be an integral part of clinical decision making. It won't replace clinicians, but it'll be an integral part of clinical decision making. And when that happens, AI will essentially become the standard of care, in which case we won't have that disconnect with the with the legal system. I think one of the truths about AI today in medicine but in other areas is that, we always we all talk about humans in the loop. again, I think it's very important to have humans in the loop, but it's especially important to have humans in the loop when a negative decision is going to be made. In other words, a a a decision that has negative consequences on on the patient, on the client, on the member. It really it's really important that AI not be allowed to make that decision. without without human guidance and human approval. So I think I think we're in we're in a challenging area. It's an exciting area. I think ultimately the effect on medicine and healthcare in general is going to be very positive. the I mean it's interesting because as sophisticated as American healthcare is our healthcare system is not at all sophisticated it's hardly a sequel. Other industries have adopted AI much, much faster than it's ever going to be adopted in healthcare. And again, the bright side of that is that we have a lot that can be improved within healthcare. We in other words, we have more upside than perhaps some other industries do. So again, it's a challenge, it's an exciting challenge. the doctors' company is actually we'll we as a company, as a group with with now enlarged and enhanced with PRA. we have a great future to look forward to to really enhance the practice of medicine across the country.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: I agree. Well said. Thank you for that. So on another topic, for the podiatrists that we insure at PICA, if you were sitting across from a podiatrist who said, I'm excited about AI, but I don't want to create a liability problem, what would you tell them?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, I think the the recommendation is similar to you know what I just spoke broadly of with with with physicians of of all of all specialties. you don't want AI to blindly replace your judgment as a podiatrist, right? You don't you and you certainly don't want it to you don't follow a recommendation that you don't agree with or you don't understand. or that you can't you can't even justify. In other words, today And part of the rapid progress, applications like open evidence, it's not really a black box. When you do a clinical consultation with open evidence, it explains in detail what the reasoning is. It gives you the references, you can go back and check it. so the black box part of AI has already begun to recede, which is good, because the black box is pretty scary. again I say for for you we want any any good physician, any good physicianist who we want them to trust their judgment. That judgment require if judgment as any clinical decision requires taking advantage of of all the resources, learning experience that you have, but also whatever the medical literature and other colleagues' experiences. AI can be very helpful in that.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Great, thank you. you spent 18 years as an oncologist before becoming deeply involved in medical professional liability. What prompted you to begin your journey in kind of the medical professional liability side and what influences you how you lead the doctor's company today versus when you started?
Richard Anderson MD: Well actually it's a that journey is a little bit of serendipity. I've been insured by the doctor's company since nineteen seventy-seven, you know, as a practicing physician. so basically my whole practicing career and actually by the I'm still insured by the doctor's company, but but my whole medical practice was insured by the doctor's company. So I was very familiar with the company. And then over the years I got asked to participate in claims committees or underwriting committees or claims reviews. I was elected to the board in in in nineteen eighty-three, I think. So a long time ago. And then in the major Rubicon for me was in nineteen ninety four I got asked to become chairman of the board. Well that's a major commitment. And so I decided that I had so much respect for the company and so much respect for the work that we do, that I thought it was worth it was worth taking the leap into that. So for a number of years I practiced four days a week. I practiced, I'm sorry, I practiced one day a week and worked in in NAP at the doctor's company four days a week. and now ultimately came to to work at TDC full time and not to practice any longer. But but again And so wha how is it different? Well, for one thing, I miss the practice of medicine. I miss practicing medicine. I I miss being able to interact with patients directly. I miss having a having the feeling that I can help people and especially in oncology, in in major life crises. So I miss that. I miss that feeling of service. On the other hand, The doctor's company is really a fork force multiplier. with PRE now we have close to two thousand dedicated people working on behalf of the medical profession. So what what can be accomplished by all of us working together on behalf of the medical profession, it's not the same, but the scale is much larger than an individual physician working with one patient. And ultimately that for all of the things that we do, despite medicine's a team sport, there's no doubt about it. But nonetheless it's a team sport in which every play is a one-on-one between a a physician and a patient. Lots lots of members have participated in that. But and so so here it's a much larger organization. So we're able to touch more people, we're able to do more things, we have more resources than any individual physician does. for advocacy, for patient safety, of course for litigation protection and and other kinds of of services. So for me, it was a decision that evolved organically over the course of my life. It wasn't the goal, it wasn't the destination. It was a hard decision to make at the time, you know, to essentially transition from practice to the company. But it's a decision that I'm I'm very happy that I made. I also believe that, and I'm a hundred percent sure that whatever success I've enjoyed in this position is predicated on my years of practice. If I I think that was that that's that was and is absolutely critical. I don't see patients today one on one, but I see hundreds of hundreds of cases a year that I review with others, but that I review. and I talk to physicians all over the country all the time. So I have a a wonderful platform from which to survey the contemporary practice of medicine. For all its glories and for all its problems. And so I really and and and in order to have that platform I've had to have all of those years of clinical experience. I it wouldn't be the same without it.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Hmm, no, it wouldn't be. Well, Dr. Anderson, finally looking across the entire healthcare ecosystem today, we're seeing immense pressure on the medical professional liability market. from persistent premium adjustments to a distinct rise and high severity claims. How do you keep the doctors company's mission to advance, protect, and reward the practice of good medicine at the forefront today and in the future?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, I guess my answer to that is that we keep it at the forefront by never allowing it to change. In other words, there are good times, they're bad times. Yes, it's a really nuclear verdict, high severity, it's a real issue. but it's not the first time that we've faced claims crises or that that the sever severity has has has increased. actually in fact the founding of both our companies, PRA and T D C you know, goes back to the the sort of the original the seminal crises of the early seventies. I think as long as we continue to focus on the mission, then the rest, yes, we have to we have to deal with the environment in the world or the world that we live in. But if we let the mission be our guide, if we let best imaginable service be our guide, then then what's happening outside, yes, it requires adjustment. It requires that we intelligently as a company that we integrate AI into the way we work and that we use it intelligently. Not that we give over control of a company to a box, but that we use it intelligently. That's one of the challenges that that I think we all face today. but for me it's I in terms of the crises that we faced, I mean somebody once said that life is just one damn thing after another. And
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Yeah.
Richard Anderson MD: And and you know, so sure that I mean we're that you know, th we're in a business where it's yeah, it's just one thing after another. But I'm I'm proud to be in the business, I'm proud of the work that we do, and I'm happy to be of service.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Dr. Anderson, thank you so much for taking the time to do this this interview with us and we really appreciate it. Thank you.
Richard Anderson MD: Well, thank you very, very much. It was really a pleasure. I appreciate it. Thanks.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: So again, thank you so much for joining us here on the Insured Connection. Please tune in and listen to other interviews that we will be doing. Thank you so much, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Richard Anderson MD: Well thanks. First of all, it's a pleasure to pleasure to be with you today and appreciate the opportunity to to talk with you. I think PICA is a great fit for The Doctors Company just the way that ProAssurance is a great fit for the doctor's company. I mean, we were both companies were founded in nineteen seventy-six They have physician roots. TDC has always been a reciprocal and it continues to be a reciprocal to this day. And that's really been a defining advantage for us because we're a mission-driven company. The mission is to advance, protect, and reward the practice of good health care. And we we're allowed with that reciprocal structure owned by our members, no outside shareholders, in fact, no shareholders at all, the members just own the company. we're able to focus on the mission. Advance, protect, reward the practice of good medicine. And one of the ways that we try and make that a living mission is to focus on the concept of best imaginable service. best imaginable service the one hand it's easy to imagine what the definition means, but it's actually a term of art. And it it what it sa what it's saying is we want to provide service so good that our members would not think of going to any other insurance company because they simply wouldn't believe that anyone could do it better than we could do it. So, but that's an aspirational goal, right? Because we don't get to define the goal. Our members get to define the goal. And of course, it's a little bit like the pole ball thing. Every time you clear a hurdle, they just raise the bar. But that's good because that's a continuous challenge to meet the highest expectations of our members. And when we do that, when we succeed in the mission and providing best imaginable service, we believe that we enhance the environment in which medicine is practiced broadly, medical professions are practiced in the United States, and that we increase the likelihood of good outcomes in in medical care. So what does PRA do? What does what does PICA do? Well it it expands both our size and scale, so there are economies of scale, but it also expands our footprint across the medical profession. So we insure more of virtually every specialty, but we also now begin to insure specialties that we didn't insure previously that have been under the PRA group. and although we insure some podiatrists, you have a wonderful concentration of of podiatrists, and that we're excited about about being able to expand our service in in that area. So we're excited in every way possible.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: thank you for that. my next question would be along those lines, how important is physician ownership in today's practice environment?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, I think it's really critical. In other words, I I think I think that the history of the doctor's company and to some extent the history of PRA, the recent history of PRA, illustrates the point. TDC was was founded in in nineteen seventy-six. it hasn't had to change ownership, it hasn't had to change structure in all of these years. PRA was founded in the same year, but ultimately became a publicly traded company. And be once it became a publicly traded company, by law, by logic, the primary obligation was to the shareholders. And that's great until it isn't great. And when when PRA ran into some some problems and shareholders basically demanded some kind of change in structure. It opened the opportunity for us to actually buy the outstanding shares and take it private. But it's not just PRA that has run into the this kind of challenge. This is the fourth publicly traded company specializing in medical professional liability that the doctor's company has taken private. And there are lots of reasons why that's a strong model for the medical professions. It's hard with a with a long tail line like medical professional liability. It's very difficult to have to meet the quarterly expectations of Wall Street. whereas we don't we don't have those obligations. our obligation is to our members, our obligation is to our mission, our goal is to provide best imaginable service. We understand that insurance is a financial business, we understand. that if there's no margin, there's no mission. We understand that you have to be good at math to be in the business that we're in. but to do it with our sense of mission and drive and not responsive to quarterly meetings with Wall Street, I think has been a tremendous advantage for us.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: I'd agree, thank you. so healthcare is changing rapidly, in fact, as practices are becoming more complex, technology's advancing, and patient expectations are rising. what developments do you believe will have the greatest impact on physicians and their practices over the next five to ten years? Is it AI?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, yes, if I had to point to to a new influence that's going to have an enormous impact, I would certainly agree it it will be AI. and and the other one though is one that's already had an enormous influence and that's going to continue and continue and continue, and that's consolidation in healthcare delivery. I think that just as a general economic principle, once consolidation is unleashed, it doesn't stop. It just keeps going. And I think we've seen that, right? I mean there are more than there are more than sixty companies, probably more than that, that provide medical professional liability insurance in the United States. But the top ten carriers control eighty percent of the market. And so even there's we're seeing that consolidation. The doctors company is built to last. we we insure more physicians than any other company in the States. we're quite a bit larger than MedPro, not quite larger than Berkshire Hathaway. And it doesn't truthfully, it only sort of matters whether we're number one or number two in size. We have plenty of scale, and our goal is not it's not important that we be the biggest. It's important enough that we we have economies of scale and that we're large enough to meet the needs of all our members. What's really important is that we be the best. So that's that's my sense of consolidation. AI is something different. I think AI is an enormous challenge. It's an enormous opportunity. It isn't one that is readily ignored because it's it has it it as we can see the way it has powered through society and not only powered through society, but powered into the way we think about almost every issue. It's hard to think of an important issue that we end up discussing in which we don't contemplate what the effect of AI is going to be. The effect of AI in medicine is already obvious in some ways. It's a tremendous facilitator of medical research. We can do things now in a dry lab that would have taken years in a real lab to do, protein structures and things like that. so that part has been great. It's been helpful for things like scheduling. It's been helpful for things like The billing wars. In other words, it helps for the providers to be able to have AI helping them with billing. Unfortunately, of course, the the health insurers do the same, so there it helps them make denial, rapid denial of claims. And so you have this AI arms race that needs to work its way through. But it's been very good for scheduling. I think where it's had the most immediate impact on the on the clinical front is for practicing physicians who who are able to take advantage of ambient listening so that they're not spending every moment with the patient at their back while they're typing into a screen. Wow. And ambient listening really take takes care of that. I think right now we have a medical legal challenge because our AI in general, but healthcare in general Is moving much faster than the legal profession ever moves, or than the legal system ever moves. So right now, if you if an AI, if a physician uses AI to make help make a clinical decision, and AI gives a recommendation that's positive, in other words, the outcome is good, then everyone's happy. of course, that's great. But if AI gives a recommendation that's different than what the standard of care is or what physician's judgment might have otherwise been, then we have a real problem because in today's legal system, the physician has actually violated the standard of care to accept that recommendation. So again, if the outcome is positive, it's fine, but if the outcome is negative, then almost by definition the position's outside the standard of care. That's a real problem. And it will take our legal system, fifty states, a million juries, a million judges, a long time to sort that out. Having said that, it will, and if I had to make a prediction, I'd be pretty confident that five years from now, AI will be an integral part of clinical decision making. It won't replace clinicians, but it'll be an integral part of clinical decision making. And when that happens, AI will essentially become the standard of care, in which case we won't have that disconnect with the with the legal system. I think one of the truths about AI today in medicine but in other areas is that, we always we all talk about humans in the loop. again, I think it's very important to have humans in the loop, but it's especially important to have humans in the loop when a negative decision is going to be made. In other words, a a a decision that has negative consequences on on the patient, on the client, on the member. It really it's really important that AI not be allowed to make that decision. without without human guidance and human approval. So I think I think we're in we're in a challenging area. It's an exciting area. I think ultimately the effect on medicine and healthcare in general is going to be very positive. the I mean it's interesting because as sophisticated as American healthcare is our healthcare system is not at all sophisticated it's hardly a sequel. Other industries have adopted AI much, much faster than it's ever going to be adopted in healthcare. And again, the bright side of that is that we have a lot that can be improved within healthcare. We in other words, we have more upside than perhaps some other industries do. So again, it's a challenge, it's an exciting challenge. the doctors' company is actually we'll we as a company, as a group with with now enlarged and enhanced with PRA. we have a great future to look forward to to really enhance the practice of medicine across the country.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: I agree. Well said. Thank you for that. So on another topic, for the podiatrists that we insure at PICA, if you were sitting across from a podiatrist who said, I'm excited about AI, but I don't want to create a liability problem, what would you tell them?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, I think the the recommendation is similar to you know what I just spoke broadly of with with with physicians of of all of all specialties. you don't want AI to blindly replace your judgment as a podiatrist, right? You don't you and you certainly don't want it to you don't follow a recommendation that you don't agree with or you don't understand. or that you can't you can't even justify. In other words, today And part of the rapid progress, applications like open evidence, it's not really a black box. When you do a clinical consultation with open evidence, it explains in detail what the reasoning is. It gives you the references, you can go back and check it. so the black box part of AI has already begun to recede, which is good, because the black box is pretty scary. again I say for for you we want any any good physician, any good physicianist who we want them to trust their judgment. That judgment require if judgment as any clinical decision requires taking advantage of of all the resources, learning experience that you have, but also whatever the medical literature and other colleagues' experiences. AI can be very helpful in that.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Great, thank you. you spent 18 years as an oncologist before becoming deeply involved in medical professional liability. What prompted you to begin your journey in kind of the medical professional liability side and what influences you how you lead the doctor's company today versus when you started?
Richard Anderson MD: Well actually it's a that journey is a little bit of serendipity. I've been insured by the doctor's company since nineteen seventy-seven, you know, as a practicing physician. so basically my whole practicing career and actually by the I'm still insured by the doctor's company, but but my whole medical practice was insured by the doctor's company. So I was very familiar with the company. And then over the years I got asked to participate in claims committees or underwriting committees or claims reviews. I was elected to the board in in in nineteen eighty-three, I think. So a long time ago. And then in the major Rubicon for me was in nineteen ninety four I got asked to become chairman of the board. Well that's a major commitment. And so I decided that I had so much respect for the company and so much respect for the work that we do, that I thought it was worth it was worth taking the leap into that. So for a number of years I practiced four days a week. I practiced, I'm sorry, I practiced one day a week and worked in in NAP at the doctor's company four days a week. and now ultimately came to to work at TDC full time and not to practice any longer. But but again And so wha how is it different? Well, for one thing, I miss the practice of medicine. I miss practicing medicine. I I miss being able to interact with patients directly. I miss having a having the feeling that I can help people and especially in oncology, in in major life crises. So I miss that. I miss that feeling of service. On the other hand, The doctor's company is really a fork force multiplier. with PRE now we have close to two thousand dedicated people working on behalf of the medical profession. So what what can be accomplished by all of us working together on behalf of the medical profession, it's not the same, but the scale is much larger than an individual physician working with one patient. And ultimately that for all of the things that we do, despite medicine's a team sport, there's no doubt about it. But nonetheless it's a team sport in which every play is a one-on-one between a a physician and a patient. Lots lots of members have participated in that. But and so so here it's a much larger organization. So we're able to touch more people, we're able to do more things, we have more resources than any individual physician does. for advocacy, for patient safety, of course for litigation protection and and other kinds of of services. So for me, it was a decision that evolved organically over the course of my life. It wasn't the goal, it wasn't the destination. It was a hard decision to make at the time, you know, to essentially transition from practice to the company. But it's a decision that I'm I'm very happy that I made. I also believe that, and I'm a hundred percent sure that whatever success I've enjoyed in this position is predicated on my years of practice. If I I think that was that that's that was and is absolutely critical. I don't see patients today one on one, but I see hundreds of hundreds of cases a year that I review with others, but that I review. and I talk to physicians all over the country all the time. So I have a a wonderful platform from which to survey the contemporary practice of medicine. For all its glories and for all its problems. And so I really and and and in order to have that platform I've had to have all of those years of clinical experience. I it wouldn't be the same without it.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Hmm, no, it wouldn't be. Well, Dr. Anderson, finally looking across the entire healthcare ecosystem today, we're seeing immense pressure on the medical professional liability market. from persistent premium adjustments to a distinct rise and high severity claims. How do you keep the doctors company's mission to advance, protect, and reward the practice of good medicine at the forefront today and in the future?
Richard Anderson MD: Well, I guess my answer to that is that we keep it at the forefront by never allowing it to change. In other words, there are good times, they're bad times. Yes, it's a really nuclear verdict, high severity, it's a real issue. but it's not the first time that we've faced claims crises or that that the sever severity has has has increased. actually in fact the founding of both our companies, PRA and T D C you know, goes back to the the sort of the original the seminal crises of the early seventies. I think as long as we continue to focus on the mission, then the rest, yes, we have to we have to deal with the environment in the world or the world that we live in. But if we let the mission be our guide, if we let best imaginable service be our guide, then then what's happening outside, yes, it requires adjustment. It requires that we intelligently as a company that we integrate AI into the way we work and that we use it intelligently. Not that we give over control of a company to a box, but that we use it intelligently. That's one of the challenges that that I think we all face today. but for me it's I in terms of the crises that we faced, I mean somebody once said that life is just one damn thing after another. And
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Yeah.
Richard Anderson MD: And and you know, so sure that I mean we're that you know, th we're in a business where it's yeah, it's just one thing after another. But I'm I'm proud to be in the business, I'm proud of the work that we do, and I'm happy to be of service.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: Dr. Anderson, thank you so much for taking the time to do this this interview with us and we really appreciate it. Thank you.
Richard Anderson MD: Well, thank you very, very much. It was really a pleasure. I appreciate it. Thanks.
Dr. Adrianne Ross: So again, thank you so much for joining us here on the Insured Connection. Please tune in and listen to other interviews that we will be doing. Thank you so much, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.
