This week on Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones hosts guest Dr. Jared Robins, Executive Director at ASRM, to discuss all things conference. Tune in to hear what innovations are coming to the annual gathering for 2022, where all that endowment money comes from (and what it goes toward), desired outcomes for the future of ASRM, as well as an exchange of ideas on the business of business in medicine.

Listen now to hear:

What Dr. Robins has been working on since being named Executive Director of ASRM.
What the new and improved events and features will be at the conference, and how you can benefit from them. (Hint: fireside chat, networking lounge, interactive e-posters, Med-Talks, and more).
Where ASRM endowment money is procured and what it funds.
Griffin question Dr. Robins on the validity of disclosures in the medical field regarding business interests.
Griffin press about the level of influence business and medicine should have on each other, both financially and philosophically.

Dr. Robins’ information:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-robins-68a2825b/

Transcript

Dr. Jared Robins 00:00

As the healthcare providers and the business people should can't work, can't make decisions in isolation of each other. And they need a forum by which to come together and make those decisions.

Griffin Jones 00:14

Dr. Robbins, Jared, welcome to Inside Reproductive Health.

Dr. Jared Robins 00:19

Thanks, I appreciate you having me. Having me. join you. I'm excited to be here.

Griffin Jones 00:25

Your motto could be I'm not always the executive director of professional societies. But when I am, it's ironic because I don't want to call you the most interesting guy, Jared, because I don't like I don't like inflating egos that much. But I think it bears a little bit of talking about on the show you and I had dinner together in Atlanta, and I got to learn a little bit about your life. And I always say, Wow, this is like the Dos Equis guy. Is it you know, you said oh, yeah, I used to live in Atlanta. Oh, yeah. What? When was that? Oh, back in the 80s when I was a firefighter what? Oh, yeah, I was a firefighter for five years before I went to film school. What? And so let's can we tell people a little bit about your life before med school before we get into your trajectory as around?

Dr. Jared Robins 01:09

Sure. So I was doing some fire did some work because mostly working as a paramedic with the fire department in the northern suburb of Atlanta, what,

Griffin Jones 01:21

what brought you down there because you grew up in New Yorker, Long Island. Yeah, I

Dr. Jared Robins 01:25

i grew up on Long Island, I always wanted to be a firefighter paramedic, long wait to do such in the New York area, was looking at schools in order to really in most fire departments. In order to advance through the ranks, you had to have an associate's degree or a bachelor's degree, depending on how high you want to join the ranks. I always wanted to be chief, you know, and so I knew I needed a bachelor's degree. And I applied to schools, Emory was one of the schools I applied to the firefighting magazine was advertising heavily for fire departments in and around the Atlanta area. And so I applied to needed to pay for school. And also, I mean, I think that that was a big, big concern for me, as I wanted to go to

Griffin Jones 02:09

college, I had to pay for college. So you were a paramedic while you were at school. Correct? Yeah. And that why film school.

Dr. Jared Robins 02:19

So I was a, I was had an interest in in film and arts, and, you know, what creative thinker, and, you know, it was going to college really, for the degree more than for the knowledge and so I thought I would do something that was gonna be really fun. So I was a film studies major with the bio minor, and then, you know, as kind of progressing through school, decided, I think, really, through my experiences, as a paramedic, really decided that that medicine was going to the way I was going to be the way I went. And so, you know, made sure I hit my medical school prereqs. But I'm not really sure that that was the way I was gonna go when I was when I started the application process, but wanted to make sure I had those prereqs in case I decided that that was an avenue that I wanted to pursue.

Griffin Jones 03:05

Do you ever end up working on any films or TV? Do you

Dr. Jared Robins 03:09

did some short, you know, some short school type programs, but never anything professionally? Now?

Griffin Jones 03:14

How did the transition to medicine happen?

Dr. Jared Robins 03:18

Really. So, you know, had a strong interest in science. And so was taking some of those science classes along, you know, in school nature, like I said, I hit those prereqs I was in a fraternity as well, a lot of my fraternity brothers, were taking the MCAT, my girlfriend at the time was studying for the MCAT. So I thought I would take the MCAT to just see how I did and did well on the MCAT and just, you know, sort of almost out of fun applied for to Emory into state university of Stony Brook for to see if I would get into medical school and I did and had a long, you know, sort of inner conversation, you know, deciding is this really what I wanted to do talk to my friends, my advisers, my parents, you know, prayed on it a little bit and decided, you know, I thought let's go to medical school and see what happens. It doesn't mean I can't be a fireman in the end. But let's see how back to school goes. So State University of New York at Stony Brook was relatively inexpensive at the time. Not anymore. But and so I would be able to go there to school and not have to worry about taking out a whole bunch of loans. And so I went to medical school and I loved it.

Griffin Jones 04:29

So that brought you back to Long Island and then and then did the did you immediately do residency and OB GYN and then immediately sub specialize or was there a time between no being an OB GYN and sub specializing?

Dr. Jared Robins 04:45

So it's interesting. So obviously, when I went to medical school, I thought I would, at first I didn't know what I wanted to do, you know, my interests were trauma and, you know, trauma surgery, you know, and those sorts of things and you know, So I took my you know, in medical school, for those that don't know you do in your third year, you do what's called clerkships where you essentially spend time on the wards in the different fields. And knowing that I wanted to do surgery, and OB GYN is a surgical subspecialty. And this is actually a common story about what we do when I scheduled my OBGYN rotation immediately before my surgical rotation. So I would have that surgical experience, I would feel like you know, more confident when I walked into the AOR to impress the surgeons, and I loved OB GYN, I felt like there was a lot of some of the things that OBGYN had that that surgery really didn't have, is that idea of really being part of really developing a relationship with you, with your patients being part of the family. And, and I really love that idea of having that, that, that closeness with your patients with that ability to really impact, you know, someone's life over the course of their life. And so, but I also wanted to be a surgeon, so obviously weren't really was the best of both of those worlds, you had that ability to, to, to be a doctor, you know, to be a part of their family as a doctor and to also, you know, be a surgeon. And then we presented the chronology, which was relatively new, you know, this is now 1990, early 1990s. So it's a relatively new field. And there's this that ton of creativity currently going back to those roots of I was a film studies major. You know, there was that idea of being able to be creative and innovative and really thinking, you know, long term about how to solve problems. And so I was really drawn to that reproductive endocrinology can making families what can be more fun and exciting and rewarding than building families and, and at the same time, being creative and innovative and being able to do surgery that so it really

Griffin Jones 06:56

was often here are you guys that like surgery say that Rei isn't enough surgery for them that they miss surgery? Do you find that to be the case?

Dr. Jared Robins 07:05

So you know, I think that the art, the art world has definitely changed a lot. Since the 1990s. We did a lot more medicine back in the 1990s. You know, we we were this you know, we started laparoscopic, laparoscopic surgery in many ways, it's was started by the RBIs. And so, a lot of that, you know, we now consider make surgeon make surgery. It's it was an offshoot of REI I think that um, you know, we become very, we become less surgical, surgically focused a lot of the reprogramming chronologist out there, there's still a bunch of us that still do a lot of surgery now. And so I think it's, you know, I think we as individuals have to sort of find our way, ASRM, through the Society for Reproductive surgeons actually has a surgical track that surgical scholars track for reproductive endocrinology fellows. So those fellows that really do want to be more surgically involved can be part of that reproductive surgical tract. And and, you know, these are programs that have higher volumes of surgery. So there is so it is out there for a lot. I mean, my practice certainly became much less surgically heavy as I as I got older.

Griffin Jones 08:11

Well, that's a good thing for the fellows and residents to learn about. If you're listening, if you've been on the show before and you're wondering, Hey, Griffin didn't ask me that much about my backstory. Why not? I don't know go to film school and be a fire department paramedic for years and and tell me about it dinner sometime because I think it's interesting. So let's fast forward a bit. And, and let's get to the position that you are that you now hold that ASRM, which is a full time position as executive director for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. And let's talk about how that came to be.

Dr. Jared Robins 08:51

So gosh, so you know, I, I went to business school. I graduated from Kellogg with my MBA in 2020. And was thinking about ways in which to really have an impact on, you know, on our health system. Really my interest in,

Griffin Jones 09:12

in what did you decide to do the MBA, so I

Dr. Jared Robins 09:16

really wanted to learn to be more involved in healthcare operations that I felt like to after the healthcare system is rapidly changing. You know, big health systems are not run by physicians, they're run by MBAs and attorneys. And and but why

Griffin Jones 09:33

why an MBA and not an M H A, then if it was healthcare operations that interested you. Yeah.

Dr. Jared Robins 09:39

I mean, it's its business. It's really these big businesses that are having such an impact on our health system, not just in reproductive biology, but throughout the whole entire health system. For me, getting my MBA was just learning a language right? I never had any business classes again, film studies many directly weren't, you know, we weren't looking at business classes. And so, you know, as a division chief, so I was division director of reprogramming chronology at Northwestern. And, you know, so much of my job was understanding business. And, you know, we all Northwestern worked as a dyad. So it was a physician and a business person sharing the role of running these practices. And I really felt like there was a language that I understand that, you know, medicine has its own language. And we know that when we talk to patients, we have to remember that we have to read, you know, think in lay language, not not thinking in medical language, and business has its own language as well. And I just didn't need to know what that business language was in order to really be able to effectively run a practice.

Griffin Jones 10:48

And you say business language, what are you referring to financial modeling? What do you answer

Dr. Jared Robins 10:52

modeling, p&l sheets, even in marketing, I mean, there's just a whole, you know, the way in which the way in which people spoke was very business oriented, right, it had its own focus. You know, when when they're talking about the price setting, and that and I cannot economic, the economic modeling behind that, and when, when we're dealing with insurance companies, and you know, talking about how, you know, to negotiate, and all of that was stuff that I had really never learned, I was terrible negotiator, 233 courses, and, you know, I took 12 negotiation credits at business school, I think that was really important to understand that and really looking at the system, even how to do things like how to affect change, how to how to lead up, you know, these are all business concepts that physicians really never learn. And so I really felt if I was going to be effective at changing the way the health system is that there needed to be more doctors involved in that. And in order to be at the table, we needed to know the language. And because, you know, we were being told as physicians by these health care, business practitioners, that you know, we should stay in our lane, you do the doctoring, and we'll do the operations. But I felt like how can they do the operations if they don't really understand what we do? And so they really needed to have that physician voice at the table until we understood the language, we wouldn't get that voice. And so really, I was like going to language school for me to go to business school.

Griffin Jones 12:30

Were there any other physicians in your class at Kellogg at that time?

Dr. Jared Robins 12:33

So Kellogg actually has an interesting program. So first of all, there's a lot of business there's so the executive Health Program has a bunch of doctors in it. And then they also have a joint MBA residency program with a couple of the residency programs at Northwestern. I wasn't in any of those because I really didn't know anything about business. I felt really like a blank slate. I wanted to do a traditional MBA school. So, you know, Kellogg was like, Are you sure you want to do this? You don't want to be in the executive program, you know, you're kind of old. And I said, No, I really want to do a traditional program. So I actually did what they call the managers program, which is a part time evening and weekends program, where it's typically young managers, the average age in the class is around 27. It was definitely the oldest by far. I didn't have any other doctors although after I joined the program, a couple of doctors joined a couple of young doctors behind me. So but it was not a program that was aimed at physicians, it was really aimed at managers. And so for me, it was really getting that basics. I mean, basic accounting, right? Financial accounting and managerial accounting. It's one of those real basics that they may not have covered as in depth and a more senior program.

Griffin Jones 13:51

I want to talk about how that led you day is around. But I do you think it's interesting enough for the audience to sidebar for a moment on the type of negotiation that taught you at Kellogg, because from what I've come, Kellogg seems to be the greater proponent or perhaps a louder proponent of anchoring in negotiation. Whereas mo very often negotiation schools and teachers in negotiation will say, Never say the first number never give a number first. And I've done both in my career a lot. And I see that there are uses for each tactic. But generally speaking, I think it does make sense to say the first number in many cases. What were you taught there?

Dr. Jared Robins 14:41

Yeah, so College definitely is about first of all, Win Win, win win win win negotiations, right? I mean, that's a big belief in the Kellogg community is that your negotiation should always be win win. But but they do focus a lot on anchoring. I think that you do. You know, I think the anchor thing is important because it sets the tone of the negotiation. But you know, the fear of anchoring is that you could, you can anchor yourself out of a negotiation as well, right? If you, you know, if you think, all right, I'm gonna anchor high because I know we're gonna settle somewhere in the middle, you got to make sure you're not too high, because that just, you know, anchor yourself out. And so I think anchoring is definitely a big focus of, you know, and being the first to make an offer, I think it's often a really good strategy doesn't always work. And, you know, in a lot of ways that I took 12 credits, I took a bunch of negotiation classes. You know, it doesn't always, you don't always want to be the first anchor, there are definitely situations where you where that may work against you. But, you know, I think that there is definitely a focus on making that first offer. And making it realistic.

Griffin Jones 15:52

Negotiation is interesting, because you have so much to gain in a negotiation. You know, when you come by, if you go and buy a car, you buy a house, you buy a mattress, it doesn't matter, just by asking, sometimes one question can save you hundreds of 1000s of dollars, but you can, and you couldn't make that money in that in in a 10 second timeframe doing anything else. And that's what makes negotiation so valuable. And then on the other end of the spectrum, is that sometimes it's negotiation can just really hamper speed and say you want to you want to get out of there. And so anchoring does have to do with with that sometimes, sometimes you don't, it ties back to value based pricing, too, right? Yes. Let's use an example outside of medicine, so that we're not putting anybody on the spot. But let's pretend we're a web development agency. And we are a niche agency for financial institutions. If we're just selling website development, that we're being commoditized against every other web developer, that's an area where we actually do want to do value based pricing, because we want to see how many more loans do you want to sell? How many more? How many, how many more credit card applications do you want to bring on, because we know how to increase those by X percent. And so you would want you do want to do value based pricing. And you might, you probably don't want to anchor in a situation like that, because you want to see what it's really worth to that person because you're going to help them get a certain amount of outcome. And then there's other times where you just want to move as quickly as possible, and maybe not as quickly as possible. But you but it is better just to have a good position, say this is what the price is either you want it you don't and you can move through engagements more rapidly. Do you have a view on two views?

Dr. Jared Robins 17:49

So I think, you know, the kind of bring it back to kind of the question as to how I got to SRM. You know, or what, you know, what did my MBA teach me that brought me to SRM. I think that what negotiations to me was more was not only learning about how to, you know, work your way through a dealings, it's, you know, in order to be to be good at negotiations, you have to ask good questions of your of the person with whom you're working. And that brings you back to that whole idea of values, like, what's important to you, you know, where you're under, you know, really understanding where, what, what is what's critical to them, and that in their need, so that you can make your offer, you know, to fit that what that value structure is. And so it's for me negotiations was about how to ask good questions about person's values, and what's important to them, and, and, you know, where they're, you know, where their needs are. And that's what I feel like, I have to do a lot of this around, like, you know, my goal is to create value for our members. And that's about, you know, arrows say that I'm negotiating with them, because I don't, it's not like, you know, again, it is that idea of a win win. But, you know, it's about understanding where their needs are and what and, and what their values are. And developing programming and value based on those needs.

Griffin Jones 19:10

Depends on how semantic we're being right, expansive enough definition, everything's in negotiation. But tell me about the Win Win concept. And what did you learn there at Kellogg, and how do you think you're into that? How do you think you're using that principle in your position today? So I'm the Win Win concept of negotiation?

Dr. Jared Robins 19:33

Yeah, I think that. Again, I think we have a very diverse membership that, you know, very interesting and diverse membership, and we, you know, we need to make sure where we're fitting a lot of different needs, right. And as ROM, you know, it's we're not just an organization of physicians, where, you know, we're an organization that's actually 50% of us are physicians, and the remainder of the organization are business people and, you know, nurses and radiologists, mental health professionals, genetic counselors, and we have this diverse group of people, and we need to be really, you know, make sure that we're fitting everyone's needs. And so we know and with limited resources, and so there is definitely that negotiation among, you know, I often negotiate with my, with my, with my executive team as to, you know, what is going to be the next thing that we do have to negotiate with our, with our, with the board, right, to make sure that we're, you know, that we're, you know, fitting everyone's needs and, and, you know, and with members who are, you know, went when, you know, who, who want things done now, or, you know, what is, you know, who, you know, to develop the right programming, I think that there's, there's, there's lots of opportunities for negotiation. But, you know, we definitely don't want to see any of that negotiation is adversarial, right, I think that we, you know, my job is to is for everyone to, to get what there was to meet everyone's needs here. Right. And so, definitely thinking about ways in which to try to, you know, accomplish that with limited resources, limited time, small staff.

Griffin Jones 21:17

I want to talk about what you're trying to accomplish, given those considerations in wrapping up this, this negotiation side segue, did Kellogg teach you all to use the word fair, early? And often? I forget where I picked that up, but I find that it is it's perhaps even more for me than it is for the other person using the word fair, when I'm talking to them. Do you find this to be fair? Do you would you agree that this is fair? I when I do that, it makes me scrutinize my interests more. Is this really is, is the other party really going to gain from this and and then I'm also detaching from something where if it just isn't a good fit for me that we part ways friends. And so I find it really, really useful. Did that come up at all?

Dr. Jared Robins 22:10

Again, values, that idea of when we're in fairness, using the term is this fair, it's something that we definitely do a lot.

Griffin Jones 22:19

So, so I'm getting how, like, you had this interest for really figuring out how the healthcare system works, not not just your fertility practice, but like really getting a handle on how healthcare works, and that it's inseparable from business in many ways. And in order to understand that language, you had to get your MBA and that gave you a foundation for being able to run SRM and being able to bring in this this Win Win sense from of negotiation and and problem solving. But how did like, but how did like it actually be the SRM position.

Dr. Jared Robins 23:03

So the SRM position was available. As firms and organization I've been involved in over 20 years, I think that it has a great opportunity to have a strong impact on the field of women's health and men and construction of the Women's Health Organization. Let me back that up and say, on reproductive health, both for men and women, and from an advocate education standpoint, from an advocacy standpoint, from a research standpoint, but like it really answer him encompasses everything that that has been important to me, as I move through my career as a Republican technologist. And so given the opportunity to lead an organization that that has such breadth and reach was, was just an office and opportunity I couldn't pass up I'm really excited to, to be here. It's been eight months now, drinking from the firehose really learning about the organization from the inside. You know, I think that I mean, I've done the organization, I've been a part of this organization and a leader in this organization for a long time. But being on this side of the curtain has really been been eye opening in terms of just opportunities and creation of opportunities. And it's been really fun. It's been a great, it's been a great eight months. So I'm hoping that it's a lot longer. And it will see some of the fruits of that of that work as we get to our annual meeting in a couple of weeks.

Griffin Jones 24:33

And so everyone listening knows you're not doing this remotely from Chicago, you moved down to Birmingham. I did

Dr. Jared Robins 24:39

I happen to be in Chicago today because I'm going to be at a Chicago meeting tomorrow, but But yeah, I moved to Birmingham and I'm living you know, our headquarters are in Washington DC, but we have administrative offices in campus in Birmingham as well. And you know, because of the fact that that are so much of our operations happen out of Birmingham, I felt it was important to be close. To those people and so I'm living in Birmingham. Now,

Griffin Jones 25:02

I want to hear about the fire hose that you're drinking out of. But I thought this could be interesting as from history, because I bet you most people don't know how did alstrom end up being headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama,

Dr. Jared Robins 25:16

we had a, we had a leader, you know, a CMO that was part of UAB. And so that's how that's how it became part of it. Yeah,

Griffin Jones 25:27

it was, it was the inception of the society or years after,

Dr. Jared Robins 25:32

sorry, it's actually been around since the mid 1940s. But the headquarters was actually, you know, it. It rotated from sort of President to President and you know, before it became, you know, before it became established, you know, with a full staff and, but when it when it finally got headquarters, and when it finally really bought a building in the 1970s in Birmingham, so it was that building that that started at sort of headquartered,

Griffin Jones 26:01

low, some, you know, you sponsors that do all of these little events for trivia night, go ahead and stick that one in there for your for

Dr. Jared Robins 26:09

your whole answer. I'm trivia. Either do with our board, we'll do

Griffin Jones 26:15

a whole episode on SRM trivia. Somebody would somebody would sponsor it. Anyway, let's let's talk about like you said, you're drinking from the firehose, which is the case in many leadership positions, and certainly one with society's largest ASRM. What, what are the things that you're like getting your hands around right now?

Dr. Jared Robins 26:38

Yeah, so, you know, I think that, um, obviously, you know, we have a, I had to learn a lot about, about our budget, about our endowments. So that was a, that was learning a lot, I learned a lot about, you know, where the money goes. So that was a, that was certainly something we can talk about, you know, focusing on our meeting coming up really how the meeting is run, you know, I think that we all go to this meeting, I've been going, I've been at this meeting every year for almost the last 20 years. And, and the meeting just just happens, right? I mean, we have no idea when we're attending this meeting, the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to get to make this meeting happen, the numbers of vendors that we that we have that necessary in order to make sure the meeting runs properly, from the electronics and the lighting to, you know, to staffing the rooms, I mean, it's just, there's so much that goes on in running this meeting, and I just had no idea how just how much there was and how hard these people work, in order to really, you know, the SRM staff is just unbelievable, when it comes to me, you know, when it comes to running this meeting, and, you know, the entire staff is, is actually at this meeting, making sure that it runs smoothly. And so, you know, I suggested changes, as you know, because you're involved in some of these changes at this meeting. And to make these happen, I was like, Oh, this will be so easy, let's just do that. Let's just do this. And, you know, the dominoes that that suggestion created, and in order to make it happen, and the staff did, I mean, you know, I came in with this idea that I wasn't going to make any changes, because I really just wanted to learn the organization. You know, I came in at a time when it was sort of at the end of the planning of the meeting in January, because the meeting is planned at months in advance. And, and I was like, oh, you know, we should really have more of this at the meeting. And we should really do this at the meeting. And, you know, my staff was like, alright, well, we're just gonna listen to this crazy guy and make these things happen. And, and I think that, you know, learning what, what actually took to me, these small, what seemed to me to be small changes happen was, was amazing. And I'm so lucky to have this incredible staff that I work with

Griffin Jones 28:50

every day. I want to talk about a couple of those. Let's let's you said we could talk about where where the money goes. So where does the money go? Jared?

Dr. Jared Robins 28:59

Yeah, so, you know, we we have? We have a lot of endowments. Right. So a big focus of our money is the Research Institute. Right? We have, we've established the Research Institute was established in 2019. By committee, and, and that, and that is to put that the purpose for the research institute is to make sure we're getting projects funded that wouldn't be funded through traditional funding mechanisms. So, you know, stem cell research, we know we can't get funded through through the NIH, or we're trying to do nursing research. We have, you know, funds set aside for that. I mean, really, you know, things that are very relevant to our field that are going to move our field forward, but when they get funded through traditional funding mechanisms this year would give me over, you know, over a million I want to say, as close to a million behalf, but I don't want to overstate the truth, but it's definitely over a billion dollars in grants this year. And so a large part of our endowment. You know, when you look at how much money we have, you know, a large part of that is committed to the Research Institute, in order to make sure that we can do that funding, and in order to really have that endowment fully funded, we needed a whole lot more money. Right now, you know, we're trying to only use, you know, interest generated from the research institute in order so that we don't have to touch the endowment. But we all know what's happening in the financial world right now. And so, you know, our endowment is certainly not going to last, that market doesn't turn around. You know, another big part of our endowment is the Center for Policy and Leadership that that recently launched, we're really we're pushing the launch for the Center for Policy Leadership at the at the annual meeting this year. And that is a nonpartisan Think Tank. Right, we know that reproductive policy happens. And and there are a few things tanks out there that are that are helping to inform our policymakers and the public about what the implications of these policies have the of developing this, this policy and law, we, you know, a lot of them are biased. And these think tanks and a lot and none of them are really run by reproductive medicine specialists. And so we have put together a Center for Policy and Leadership to the SRM to be a nonpartisan at, you know, think tank to help provide policymakers with data. I think the PERT the example that we're that, that they're focusing on a lot now is just data to access to care. So we, you know, the we're helping the military to develop an Access to Care policy for Reproductive Medicine. And, you know, our one of the white papers that we put out is what would that cost the government in order to do that, so again, it's non partisan, partisan, and just information, research developing concept. And so that's, you know, that's a lot of went in depth. So we have some educational endowment. So you know, this money isn't just available for us to use, when we look at our endowment, we have about two and a half times our operating budget and on declared funds. But that's fairly modest for organization of our size. You know, the rest of that the rest of that the money that we have sort of as our as our, you know, money in the bank, they're committed or dominant. So, you know, people have donated that money for specific purposes, and we really can't touch that, but except for the purposes for which they're, you know, have been, have been endowed.

Griffin Jones 32:34

Did the endowment, did the damage just come from donor funds? They also come from sponsor funds. How does that work?

Dr. Jared Robins 32:41

Yeah, so some sponsor funds, some donor funds, it's also it's donated money, right, where we're a 5013 c organization. And so it's money that's been donated to answer for for these purposes.

Griffin Jones 32:55

So but it does, like, when a company gets a big boost, or does a Ruby sponsorship at SRAM, does that ever go to the endowment? Does that go to OP X for earmark for the event? How does that work?

Dr. Jared Robins 33:08

Yeah, so the funds that we raised, say, I thought at the Expo at Amsterdam, that's all going towards operating funds.

Griffin Jones 33:16

So he talked a little bit about the things that you want to do. And you did. The Research Institute was established in 2019. Before you there's also the Center for Policy Leadership. But you also said that I want to start doing some things that ASRM and your staff said, Okay, well listen to the crazy guy and do what he wants. I know what a couple of those things are, because you did the SRM med talks, for example, business of medicine. There's probably others that I don't know about. So why don't we start with those to tell us what's going on?

Dr. Jared Robins 33:55

Yeah, so let's talk about SRM med talks. One of the criticisms I've heard in my years as an SRM member is that we should have, you know, some, some might some some small clinical focus, right, let's let's focus on what can we do clinically? And so what we conceived of was these short macro learning this, you know, short talks, 15 minute lectures on clinical topic. I wish I had them in front of me, I would have been really smart to have for this meeting. So one of them is like disasters in the in the IVF. Center, right? So we have someone who is going to talk about how to prepare your lab, you know, your to protect your cryopreserved tissues in the case of a disaster. We're going to talk about, you know, the what, how, how Kerrygold medicine talked about how she responded to Hurricane Sandy at NYU when they had to worry about, you know, protecting their tissues. And so we're going to do these short 15 minute talks. That like crossover, the different specialties, right? So we're going to have maybe a talk from our urology group, talk from our we're going to be chronology group, and maybe a talk from the nurses, you know, so that we're covering all the areas,

Griffin Jones 35:13

I'm giving a talk on how to use messaging to engage patients and staff,

Dr. Jared Robins 35:17

so I could have helped you. One of our topics is, is actually how to improve patient engagement. And so you're going to be talking about patient engagement, we're talking the urology group, and that same lecture group is going to talk about when you know, appropriate referrals to the urologist and how the urology in the REI should partner to, you know, improve patient engagement and in that fashion. So, again, so that way, we have a business person, we have virologist, you know, we're trying to cross over, I think that same group, we have a talk on, on the use of EMR, for instance, I think in that group, as well. And so, you know, this idea of the EMR portal, so this whole, this whole idea of how, you know, we want to be we want to a group of talks that have clinically oriented, but that span the whole society, so that the our business people, our medical people, and our nurses, for instance, could get together here a group of talks, and that would spark conversation about ways in which we could practice better. And that was really the idea behind the that talks is, you know, is to create, just to create a conversation, where everyone is where all the different areas of our field are able to get together. And here are a series of talks that that can, that really could could interest all of them. And spark conversations, sparking conversations is right next to where the man talks are going to be in the exhibit hall, we've developed that networking lounge. Again, one of the can, one of the concerns and complaints about SRM is that there's no place to just network with people that you know, there's, there's often like, chairs or tables set up in the in the hallways, but not really, you know, those could often be taken, you know, if you want to sit down with a group of like minded people, there wasn't really a good place to do that at the meeting. And networking, when we when we polled people about what they're what the value they get out of the meeting, a big part of that is networking. And that's why it was so important for us to be back in person this year. Because, you know, the online meetings were great from a content perspective, but miss that idea of being able to just network with your colleagues. And so this year at the meeting, we've established a networking lounge, that networking lounges will have some some programming there. So we're going to do, for example, meet the editors. So you have an opportunity to get together with the editors in an informal setting. But the whole idea is it's it'll be a place for us to be able to sit down and talk and network with each other without having to go searching for a place somewhere in the convention center. You know, if you want to get a group together, you can say, you know, meet us in the networking lounge at 1030. And, and I think that that is sitting right next to these med talks. So you'll be able to if you know, we just had a really great talk, let's all go chat about it. Now. You know, let's we're you know, we're going to talk about it the business of medicine session, too. So we did create the business of medicine session, the our association for reproductive managers, which Griff is a very, I think it's I think you're on the board right? Is a board member of that organization and really important organization to ASRM, it's, you know, it's a group of managers of IVF programs and of REI programs. And we turn to to arm and said, we need to we need to have more business at this meeting that, you know, I think one of the things that we hear often is that our physicians and again, I can speak personally about this don't have an opportunity to learn much about the business of medicine. And we we have a lot of business people that come to the meeting, we want to make sure we're creating value for them as well. And so we're, this year we're doing two sessions on the business of medicine is involved in involved with them. We're doing a TED talk session, four or five hours for five sessions, rather five TED talks, I think it's five TED talks, maybe three TED Talks. We're doing a group of TED talks like God, we're doing a group of TED talks on the business of medicine on Monday. So with question and answer sessions, we have some excellent speakers that are coming to give those TED Talks and then the following day, so that's Monday and then on Tuesday, we're doing a CEO fireside chat that Griffin's gonna be moderating for us, where you have an opportunity to talk to we have representatives from a variety of different types of practices from private equity to physician owned academic practices, and private Demmick and private dynamic practices and we're going to talk about how we how What the What the similarities are and differences are and really give an opportunity for people to ask questions of these leaders. And the second half of that session, we're going to do an open brainstorming session about how to create a business of medicine track today is around. So really trying to engage our members to tell us, what do you want, right? I mean, I think, you know, I can sit down and figure out what I think you want. But, but more importantly, we want to sit down and hear from you say, what do you want and learning about business of medicine so that in 2023, we can, we can have a real business of medicine tract at our meeting,

Griffin Jones 40:39

I want to introduce a philosophical question for that, it will be useful as people come to show up and give feedback on the business of medicine track, I'm interested in what you think about it. I remember, years before I ever got involved, before I ever worked in health care, one to one of my more hippie cousins, were sitting around and said health care shouldn't be a businessman, you know, my family leans a certain way. You know, I'll nodded and, and, and I remember thinking, but, but how can that be? And I think that attitude still prevails a little bit even in our field. And in many cases, I don't think it's useful. But but the first one, the first is, is that it? How could How could it not be a business, it's in it, there are craftsmen and craftswomen there, there are people that are providing services, and there is a race to constantly improve and, and provide advantages, and by nature, that is business. And so how could you ever totally remove it? And the second one is, how much harm are we doing when we pretend that that it isn't intact? Because we want to, we want to, we want to, we want to make sure that the tone is right. And we do have did providers certainly have a responsibility to patients, patients have a certain set of rights, and those have to be protected? But I don't I don't see it as being useful to say that it isn't a business I'd see that as being disingenuous almost like, you know, abstinent, you know, it's, it's 100% abstinence on sex because sex is sex can be dangerous, it sure can. But, but pretending that people aren't doing it often leads to all kinds of perversions. So what is your view on the role of, of, of how much business and medicine should be constrained versus should be facilitated in some way like this?

Dr. Jared Robins 42:45

Look, there's all kinds of philosophies about how you know about how we should have medicine should be. I don't, I don't want to wax philosophical about that. I think right now in the world of rebirth of Endocrinology, whether you're in the US or abroad and can serve as an international society, it is a business. And, you know, I think whether whether that is a government run business, or it's a private equity run business, or it's a physician owned business, there's, we have to, you know, we have an obligation we I think we do as physicians have an obligation to meet the needs of our patients, but we have to do that in a way that, that it's, you know, economically feasible, in order to, to achieve that. And I think that the business of medicine is changing over time, you know, I think that the, that we need to understand as physicians and not even just as physicians, as a society, we need to understand that we have to understand we have to negotiate and come back to negotiations, we have to be able to negotiate and negotiate with our insurance industry, and we have to be able to negotiate with our, with our media providers, right with our, with the people of whom we're going to buy our band aids from, you know, I think that there there are, there are needs that we have, as a group of, you know, have have providers in order to in order to be able to give the best quality care, which is what we all want, right? I don't care what type of practice you're in our ultimate goal is that we want to give the best quality of care to our patients. We have to figure out a way to do that without, you know, with was still being able to make a living and keep are and you know, we all have employees. I mean, as I have nurses, we have nurses that that work for us and embryologist and, you know, cleaning people that are that we need to make sure clean our rooms. I mean, I think everyone is equally important. So we need to make sure that we can stay solvent and the way in which to do that is changing dramatically and as a society, we need to understand that In order to make sure that we can keep our practices afloat. And that's what we want to make sure SRM is providing value to help us to do that, as that business of medicine changes, we, we will continue to evolve. I think that, you know, that idea of evolving as a society is really, really important to make sure that we're constantly meeting the needs of our of our members. And I think right now, the needs of our members are to understand how to do better business.

Griffin Jones 45:28

Maybe it's always been a business, right? In the 19 centuries, somebody still made the blinkers, right. So it was just all business was smaller back then. And some businesses have gotten so good at providing certain needs, whether it be entertainment or food, that the frontier really is madness, as human beings, we don't want to die, and we don't want to get sick. And medicine is the is what allows us to constantly push the limit of those two otherwise, natural limits. And and so the the things that contribute to that, and you said, you know, it's it's affecting reproductive medicine, I think it's it's affecting all medicine, whether it's single payer, whether it's public payer, that how many companies are in Israel alone, right now working on artificial intelligence, they're not, they're not doing it just for they're doing it as part of because they know that by innovating this way, that's going to give them a competitive advantage. The people that creates laparoscopic technologies and improves the quality of health care, they're doing it because it's going to give them a competitive advantage. And so to for systems like engaged MD that didn't exist 10 years ago, improves the quality of the experience for patients. And, and, and it's a value for them to enter the marketplace. But what constraints Jared need to be in place, say, Okay, you guys aren't running the show. And I think it during COVID, we saw pharma companies take a little bit of say, doctors eventually had to say, so it's like, alright, slow down, like, Okay, once we look at the research, then we'll tell you, it's safe. You're telling us it's safe early, like we'll agree, or we won't, but But it's us that make the call. So what constraints need to be in place so that it isn't just businesses manipulating? The system for lack of a better word?

Dr. Jared Robins 47:36

Yeah, that's a really hard question. I think that, you know, I think society is like, like the American Society of Reproductive Medicine is a great could provide a really great vehicle by which people to bring people together to have those conversations. Right. I think that

Griffin Jones 47:54

lets you and I have the conversation now.

Dr. Jared Robins 47:58

Even about where what I don't know, I think the constraints are gonna be really situational. Right? I think that, um, I don't think that, you know, I think that we need to make sure we're again, we're meeting everyone's needs, right. And so, you know, I think COVID was a really difficult COVID was a unique and really difficult situation where we were getting, were we getting lots of different inputs of information. And not everyone was getting that same information, and there was a ton of misinformation. And so, right, I think that I think, ultimately, it should be, again, I think the physicians and the health, the health care providers should control healthcare, right. And it shouldn't be a bunch of attorneys and business people that necessarily tell us how to take care of patients. But we need the input of everybody, right, we need the input of the of the health, that's where that dyad, if it would work would really be a good diet, where you have a healthcare provider and a business person sort of working together. I think that neither one of those, the healthcare providers and the business people should can't work, can't make decisions in isolation of each other. And they need a forum by which to come together and make those decisions. I think that, you know, the government also had there was biases in the government and COVID was incredibly politicized. And so, you know, what I think is what the I think the can, I don't I wouldn't say constraints. I think it's about decision making and being you know, intelligent and decision makers and having a a buyer and not a non partisan like an unbiased forum like our Center for Policy of leadership being a place where we can bring those leaders together to have conversations because you know, I think that that none of those groups should be able to work in isolation of each other.

Griffin Jones 49:46

I'm going through this same how I don't know exercise, I guess you would say because I want to expand inside reproductive health beyond the podcast that it's been. It's it has been so Serving as a trade media outlet. So I want to make it more of a trade media like Wall Street Journal for the fertility field. And that means I've been working on the sponsorship structure, the advertiser structure, I haven't had many I've had very few advertisers on because I don't, I don't want to do an endorsement for most people, I simply can't. So I couldn't sell advertisers until I came up with an advertising structure. But now the audience is there and, and I'm, I'm ready to do that. But I've been putting in the policy like we have editorial control. We're going to cover the news that's at mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, lawsuits, think sometimes it's going to be flattering for businesses, sometimes it's not going to be flattering for businesses, and you get editorial control over a featured content piece, where it says sponsored feature content, and nothing else you don't get to tell me not to write about these other folks are. And I know that we're probably going to write some things about sponsors that aren't great for this company sponsors, and then they just laid off 500 people. That's but but so that's one constraint that I that I view, is there any place that you think, like we should have no industry side, industry citing quotes representation in this part of ASRM or in this type of policy?

Dr. Jared Robins 51:23

I don't know. I have to, I'd have to think about that more. Nothing really, honestly, I feel like disclosure is the key there. Right. I think that when when there is industry sponsorship, that that conflict should be disclosed. But I feel that industry is a big part of our organization, and, you know, and a big part of our of our field. And, you know, I enjoy talking to the industry and learning from them. from the business perspective, do I think that they, you know, industry should be teaching physicians how to practice, you know, no, I mean, I think there's a bias there. But I do think that, you know, we learn a lot, even when we get, you know, our industry, you know, salespeople come tell us about a product. And so, you know, do you think that, you know, as long as that disclosure is there, and people have the ability to to, you know, to hear the that, that perspective, without understanding that it's a bias perspective, it's a sales oriented perspective.

Griffin Jones 52:29

Well, this is a great question for you then and then I'll let you conclude how you want to conclude, but is, is the scope for disclosures, too narrow Jared, because I don't remember if it was asked from or PCRs or both. But I had in my disclosure, in my speaker disclosure, I own a client services firm called fertility bridge, I am a paid endorser of engaged MD, I just felt like people should know those things. And it was either ASM or PCs or both. That said, take that out of your slide. You don't you don't need that. It's just It's just if you're, if you're related to pharma, and I think as I high if you want me to take it out, I'll take it out. But I still tell people in the talk I because I think they should know, I think they should know any financial interest that I have. So is our is our disclosure system or a rubric to limited in scope?

Dr. Jared Robins 53:21

So are, so we follow the rules that are set out by the ACC or VI. Right. And so that, so our disclosures for our particular, are there,

Griffin Jones 53:29

are there rules?

Dr. Jared Robins 53:30

I do think that, you know, I think it's important to know, I mean, if you're not talking about something that, you know, you're really engaged in D, as you mentioned, and, you know, then maybe it's not as important to me to know that. But I think it's important to know, those disclosures, you know, and one of the questions that we ask is, you know, are is are you going to discuss anything that is involved in one of your conflicts of interest, essentially? Right, I mean, that is part of the disclosure. So it may be that they asked you to check it out, just because the answer that question was no, but, but, but yeah, I do think that being aware of, of educators, speakers, conflicts of interest is important, because it creates wealth, it creates a bias that's both conscious and unconscious, right? I mean, you know, I think that unconscious bias is something we really need to think about.

Griffin Jones 54:23

I want to let you conclude, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna work hard to make sure that this episode comes out before the ASRM meeting, especially you sweat. You spent half the episode talking about the meeting. So I want to, we might be able to squeak it out the week before, which would be perfect timing. And knowing that the majority of our audience are members of ASRM. How do you want to conclude either about the meeting to come or just what you'd like to see from them in the coming year?

Dr. Jared Robins 54:52

Yeah, so let me say first of all, thank you for allowing me to be on definitely I thought we were going to talk only about the meeting. So this is It's really fun to sort of talk to wax more philosophically around a number of different items and topics. I do think that I, what I do want people to know about the meeting is that we do have a bunch of new things. In the meeting, we talked a little bit about the networking lounge, we talked about the business medicine track, but I think it's really important. We, we are doing things to try to appeal to younger members and to create to creating greater values. So we are having an electronic poster hall this year, so no more printing of the posters, that's all going to be electronic. And we'll see how that works like flat screens, flat screens, yep. Flat Screen poster presentations, everyone's gonna have a specific time to present. So you're not just standing there for an hour waiting, hoping that someone's going to find interest in your poster, smaller groups of poster presentations, but, but also we're going to have the posters are going to be available throughout the meeting. So if for instance, you go to that you are scrolling through the posters, and you see my poster, I don't really have a poster. So that one happened. But you know, you see a poster from Dr. Robbins or whatever and you want to speak to that person, you can contact him through the app. And I'd say aren't, you know, I like to speak to you about your poster, can we meet in the networking lounge and chat about it. So that is hopefully going to change the way in which we view our posters. And we were going to get feedback from that at this meeting and continue to adjust that for the next for next year's meeting. We are doing, one of the big value that our organization provides, I think is through our special interest groups. And only 50% of members are are a part of a special interest group. And so we aren't trying to highlight the special interest groups by doing a what we're calling are all in reception. And that is going to be on Monday night. Where we are highest, where we're going to have our special interest groups and our professional groups and our affiliate societies all present sort of as a career fair, where you get to go around and talk to people about the different special interests and find a place that you might, you know, create more value for yourself in our organization. We're doing we talked about answering trivia, we are doing what we call live cube boost. Cube boost is a product that we've had available for answering for a while now. It's a just in time, just in time micro learning platform where you get a question sent to your email every day. And then you get to answer that question. It tells you if you're right or wrong, and then gives you links and other information around that question. Yes, my turn off. Notifications. So so. So Q boost is this micro learning platform, you get opportunities, you get a daily email, which is sent to your inbox, you get to answer the question tells you if you're right or wrong. If it's if you're wrong answering that question, it goes back into that question bank for you. And you'll get asked that question again later, and then it gives you a bunch of links to further information about that question. And in addition to a brief summary. So in cumulus has been available, it's not many of our members are really aware that keeping us out there. So we're actually going to do live cube news this year. Where we're going to it's going to be trivia, you're willing to do it as a big trivia contest, five to 10 questions and with prizes, so really trying to promote that educational opportunity. And then the last thing I just wanted to mention it is camp SRM. So again, trying to appeal to young to young families, again, we were all about building families, and we want to make sure that we're, you know, supporting our families. And one of the biggest challenges I think, to come into the meeting for many young families is they're having childcare. So this year, we're sponsoring camp Amsterdam, where

Griffin Jones 58:54

we had to big deal I didn't know about that. Yeah,

Dr. Jared Robins 58:57

and we've been advertising and advertising and people keep telling me they don't know about it, so

Griffin Jones 59:01

well don't don't know about it, when they is going to be at the convention centers, they're gonna be

Dr. Jared Robins 59:06

it's actually gonna be in the hotel, and I think in the Hilton because we didn't have room we're with all of our new with all of the new offerings and our meeting we didn't have any space for it at the meeting itself, but we will be marketing it at the meeting as well. But we want people to know about it so that you know if one of the reasons they're not coming to the meeting, I mean, the meetings in Anaheim it's across the street from Disney, you know, come to the meeting, bring your kids put them in camp ask around and at the end of the meeting, head over to Disney with them or spend an extra day before after the meeting and, you know, go over that to to Disney and

Griffin Jones 59:39

I wonder if Disneyland be being there will mean more people staying through Wednesday. You know how a lot of people often leave Tuesday or they'll leave Wednesday morning or I wonder if if Disneyland being there means more people staying through Wednesday because they want to take the rest of the week with their family at Disneyland. But that's it Yeah, you know, the in 2020 I was like, how much are in person events gonna come back? And so, you know, I think that there's always going to be a need for them they'll have to be redone in different ways than they were done previously. And you're coming back to in a big way. This is like rocket just like you're like Rocky for with in person events. Jerry, you like it coming back in a big way? Well, so this episode, we will make sure that it airs beforehand. And part of the reason why you're covering so much is because you have so much to cover. And there's just so much into those interesting side. rabbit holes for for me to go down. I hope the audience agrees. But everyone will be able to hear this episode before the meeting. It should be in great time. Dr. Jared Robins, Executive Director of VA SRM. Thank you very much for coming on inside reproductive health.

Dr. Jared Robins 1:01:06

Griffin, thank you so much for having me.

1:01:10

Inside reproductive health podcast with Griffin Jones, if you're ready to take action to make sure that your practice thrives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society, visit fertility bridge.com To begin the first piece of the fertility marketing system, the goal and competitive diagnostic. Thank you for listening to inside reproductive health