Today’s Advertiser helped make the production and delivery of this episode possible. But the themes expressed by the guests do not necessarily reflect the views of Inside Reproductive Health, nor of the Advertiser. The Advertiser does not have editorial control over the content of this episode, nor does the Advertiser's sponsorship constitute an endorsement of the guest or their organization. The guest's appearance is not an endorsement of the Advertiser.
Why do insurance companies often have a much bigger advantage over fertility clinics? How do fertility clinics close the data gap with insurance companies?
In this week’s episode, JT Thompson, CFO of Inception Fertility, shares his expertise on leveraging business acumen to optimize operations and navigate the complexities of fertility care.
Tune in as JT discusses:
Growth opportunities for fertility practices (And how to harness them)
Improving the efficiency of doctors' time
Negotiating with insurance companies to benefit your practice
Making long-term decisions for your practice that may be challenging to quantify
Forecasting projections that can waste time and resources
The dilemma of investing in quality and scale of care improvements that may not show immediate ROI
JT Thompson
LinkedIn
Transcript
[00:00:00] JT Thompson: The traditional insurers of the world have been underwriting hospital care forever. And if you're a single hospital provider or something smaller and you show up to a gunfight with a knife, you're in trouble. And so you want to be on an equal playing ground. I think what we, where we do in our business is.
We're educating the payers about fertility space. It's not an area they spend a ton of time in. They don't have a ton of history that's allowed them to create good or bad expectations about it. So it's, that's been a would say a fun if that's the right word to use, a welcome portion of these conversations is that they're very much collegial and cooperative. And not just negotiating over a nickel.
[00:00:44] Griffin Jones: Patient finance is a big area for dropout at your practice and a big area for your negative online reviews. See how Bundle's multi cycle programs can make that experience seamless for your patients. Visit bundle, B U N D L, fertility. com.
What data and important business intel do you want to make big business decisions about your practice? What would you want if you had a chief financial officer like my guest today? He and I talk about opportunities for growth for practices, what he's looking at with regards to efficiency of doctor's time, talk about negotiating with insurance companies, how insurance companies often outdated practices, how practices can close that gap.
We talk about speculation. How do you make decisions that you think are really necessary for your practice in the long term, but are really hard to quantify in projections on a spreadsheet? Talk about erroneous forecasts, as in how do you avoid BS data that is just making projections for the sake of making projections and is a complete waste of everybody's time?
And then I asked JT, as the CFO of a private equity backed company, how do you think How do you approach this dilemma where there might be things that are really necessary for improving the quality and scale of care over the long term, but doesn't look like it's going to have an ROI within two years? Enjoy my conversation with JT Thompson.
[00:02:03] Announcer: Today's advertiser helped make the production and delivery of this episode possible for free to you, but the themes expressed by the guests do not necessarily reflect the views of Inside Reproductive Health nor of the advertiser. The advertiser does not have editorial control over the content of this episode and the guest's appearance is not an endorsement of the advertiser.
[00:02:24] Griffin Jones: Mr. Thompson, JT, welcome to the Inside Reproductive Health podcast. Good morning. Thanks for having me. You are the first chief financial officer to be on the show, at least that I can think of, and I'm worried that somebody's going to say, wait a minute, I came on a few years ago. I And If that's the case, I apologize to that person, but I do believe that you are the first CFO on this show and I think that is necessary because one, I know of the three core areas of business, sales and marketing, delivery operations and finance.
The last one is the one that I am weakest in and I think it's the one that many of our audience, certainly not all, we have a lot of MBAs listening and a lot of People with finance backgrounds. But we also have a lot of people that were able to get to a very successful position in life because they're just, they're good at doing something valuable that they can charge for.
And then they were able to keep costs low enough. But it wasn't really any kind of system. And as you and I were talking, one of the things that you mentioned is I'm not a middle of the fairway CFO of, just A traditional accountant, if I'm paraphrasing that correctly, rather you approach it from a business partner lens and and I wanted to know what that meant, but I wanted to hit record before you told me what that means.
Let's start off with what your approach to being a CFO is. Great. Sure. And appreciate the opportunity. And again, CFOs aren't normally trailblazers. So being the first at something is pretty cool. Hopefully I'll set up a low bar for the next guy to cross. Yeah, I am the CFO here at Inception Fertility, and and, in that capacity, I have responsibility for what you would expect to be the traditional finance roles, and we'll talk about those today, I'm sure but my career has been built around, being a strategic partner to talented executive teams and delivering information and support that allows whether it's our, any constituent, whether it's our executives our physician partners our patients, any constituent we have to try to facilitate success through the traditional delivery of what you'd expect in numbers and results and data but really from a strategic standpoint a bit around a number of.
[00:04:40] JT Thompson: A bit of high growth businesses like Inception is and the fertility space is and so bring a set of experiences around successful and efficient growth that I think are fun to deploy here in the fertility space.
[00:04:52] Griffin Jones: What is unique about the fertility space that you've noticed, or what tends to be the same underlying principles no matter what industry you're in, and then what really is different when you move to a new sector?
[00:05:07] JT Thompson: That's a great question. The my, and I think it's a really I think through that lens around, what I learned in these other industries or other healthcare specialty sectors that you can apply here. And I think your question is really spot on and that there's a lot of things that it doesn't matter what business you're in.
People make the same mistakes. People don't measure the things that matter. People yeah. Don't I would say make a lot of the same mistakes, without the best, certainly with good intentions, but without the best, data and practices. Clearly there's things that, that we're doing here that were, that they were doing before I joined, that we're doing now, that you would do in any business from from a finance and support standpoint in terms of reporting and data and management and utilization of that.
What I like about the facility space relative to some of the other healthcare sectors is just the pure organic growth opportunity. The business is growing at such a tremendous pace. Access to care and access to our services is expanding, exponentially in a way that's exciting.
Not all healthcare, healthcare is obviously a fast growing part of the economy, fastest growing for years, will continue to be. Across all healthcare delivery services this is one that's growing faster than most. It's it's really fun to be part of it.
[00:06:23] Griffin Jones: You said that some of the common mistakes tend to be universal where people don't measure the things that matter. What are the things that matter to measure?
[00:06:33] JT Thompson: I think what I found is whether it's partnering with a physician or partnering with a other clinical partner or partnering with other executives, CEOs, COOs, the smart operators will tell you if you give me, This piece of information timely and accurately in a way that I can trust, that I can act on it, and I think that's probably been consistent across all of my experiences is trying to deliver timely, trustworthy data, and people will act.
I think one of the great things about really everybody across our spectrum, and you referenced it, a lot of people have a finance background or a business background, but then they're in a different role. Most everybody in our world in healthcare in general and certainly in the fertility space, whether it's our patient partners, whether it's our executives, all well educated all intelligent all want to succeed all want to perform at a high level and that can be done with data and with the right tools and knowing how to act.
[00:07:35] Griffin Jones: And so when you say getting that timely information, do you mean the operators, the other business leaders getting that from you, the CFO, or you getting certain indicators and metrics from them?
[00:07:47] JT Thompson: Totally us delivering to the constituents the data that they want to see around the business. Whether again, whether it's an operator whether it's around how's my staffing look today?
How are my supply expense is trending. How are my, in a position partners, how are my new patient consults? How are my how are these data points giving people, access to data they trust, they can act on? How did they? I typically trust the, whatever industry it's in and that I've been a chance to be a part of, I, I approach it with you tell me what you want to see.
[00:08:19] JT Thompson: You tell me what data you need to feel like you can really manage the business. Yeah, how do you deliver a baby? Better to the patients. It could be the marketing team. What sort of data will help you sort through the right kinds of leads. It could be the operators who need to worry about staffing and metrics around turnover. It could be revenue, revenue source related. How, what data do you need that would help you make decisions in managing the mesos? And we deliver that. That's our, always know
[00:08:46] Griffin Jones: what they need or do they sometimes need you to tell them what to look for?
[00:08:51] JT Thompson: I like to think it's a great partnership and we bring, ideas to the table of, hey, what about this?
Did you think about that? Here's some data that we're seeing and here's some trends that we're seeing. Let's interpret this together. Let's decide if that's something we should continue to report on and act on. Again, the best relationships among companies and teams is interactive.
You used a word earlier that's in my core mantra these days is really respecting curiosity. And I think the greatest leaders and the greatest operators are people who are analytically and intellectually curious and willing to listen to and be thoughtful about input even if it wasn't what they came to the table believing.
I think, the greatest, among the greatest things to see is to share data with someone. That tells them a story that's different than what they always believed, and they believe it. They trust it, and they then can act on it. I think people, again, it's human nature to have. An embedded assumption about, a piece of data or the way things are and be grounded in that in a way that you have to really be proven otherwise.
And I think that the great job of support systems that we provide on behalf of all of our clinic partners and company partners, whether it's through finance or HR or IT or any support system. Is that we give 'em data, they believe.
[00:10:17] Griffin Jones: What are some of those things that clinic directors or practice managers or practice owners are coming to you looking for to get a better understanding of?
[00:10:27] JT Thompson: Sure. I think in this, in, in our space it's, data on how we can, how are we getting patients in the door? How are we can bury them into people who then proceed with us through their journey. It's it's how do we navigate the go forward world of not, this is a business, as you well know, that used to all be cash pay, self pay people.
The fantastic news is that there's a lot more benefit coverage for this service, and that expands into, you Not only traditional insurance but fertility benefit providers and helping our managers and leaders understand how to help patients navigate their own journey and their own access to benefits.
I think there's lots of ways we can help people deliver the best product. I would tell you our principle around all of this. is to allow, experts to focus on what they're experts in. So you want clinicians to be clinicians, you don't want them to be worried about, their paycheck or their expense reports or their administrative tasks that we can do on behalf of people and let people who are trained to be a physician, who are trained to be nurse practitioners, who are trained to be, whatever they're trained to be and whatever is their highest and best use. This is where we want people to spend their time and let us worry about producing support.
[00:11:45] Griffin Jones: So how do they pull you in for support sometimes? Because clinicians very often do want to be clinicians, but in this world, sometimes they're pulled into many other different things, especially if they had been owning the practice.
But even if they're, managing or operating a practice within a network, they're starting to, Think about things that they may not have had to previously, our state used to be almost 100 percent cash pay and now it's less than half cash pay with all of the employers that are here and now we're noticing that these benefits companies pay us half what they used to and so they want to be They want to be clinicians, but they're finding themselves having to figure out how they're going to operate in a way that's much different than they used to. How do you advise them on those things or how do they approach you?
[00:12:41] JT Thompson: I think it's a couple of questions in there that are really important and a couple of things. I would say that it needs to be our value proposition to Our partners and future partners, to your point, who used to own the business wholly or solely and spend a lot of time around things that the owner of a business would have to do and not just truly being a clinician.
Our, I think our value proposition and the other folks our peers in the space who are trying to support practices as they affiliate with practices. I think we all have the same. The same goals in mind and similar to other industries is to really allow them, allow the clinician in this case or the REI to be an REI and not worry about being the business person and have to handle all those things.
Being able to convince folks that we're going to deliver these services to them I call it table stakes, like we have to be able to do these things on your behalf so that you don't have to. You have to trust in us to do that. Your question was how do they access it? I find that there will always be some push information and some pull information, right?
We would love to always push data to people in a way that it shows up the way that they would like to see it on a timely basis that they would like to see it. But we're also, very interested in being asked and being asked for to look at something a certain way. So we'll, I want them to pull data from us as well or pull support from us as well.
Remind us where they need support or they'd always had to do something for us to do it for them. It needs to be interactive. So I think the delivery of it. Hopefully we'll always be push and pull but, again, I think our task is to have information at their fingertips.
[00:14:26] Griffin Jones: We're talking about negotiating with insurers, but what about an alternative approach to IVF insurance? Here's the reality. Seventy percent of IVF patients need more than one cycle and costs add up quickly, especially with medications. Bundle changes the game by offering patients a 100 percent refund.
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That's Bundlfertility. com. They bring you in for that support. And when you said that, I thought of the old hockey enforcer. I don't know if you grew up watching much ice hockey, but especially back in the day, and probably still, but certainly back in the nineties, when I was watching a lot of ice hockey, there was a, it.
People's job who their only job was to come in and trounce somebody. And I'm not saying that's a CFO's only job, but there were also other guys that, maybe half of their job was to play the game well. And then the other half of their job was to come in, trounce somebody. And so do you find that sometimes you're in this role of I am here to negotiate that.
You've got different clinicians that have all run, certain practices, Part of our value proposition as an MSO is to be able to get more efficiencies at scale, which means that I'm negotiating on behalf of people. Do you feel in that role sometimes now I am here to negotiate a better deal for you? I'm here to be the pro negotiator. Is that ever the case?
[00:16:12] JT Thompson: I grew up in and still live in Louisville, Kentucky, where there wasn't a lot of ice hockey. But I understand what you, I understand the the role, and I would tell you that certainly my approach in this capacity is far more carrot than stick.
I don't believe in, in, pounding the table and telling, our partners this is what I'm here to do, I'm here to enforce this or to do that. It has to be much more in a support way, but I do believe that we can deliver That are game changing and allow us to do things we can go be the person to negotiate contracts, whether it's with, payers or suppliers, we can take that lift off of our partners are used to have to do that and they can trust us to do it.
And if they want us to be the heavier business partner deliver of a message, happy to do it. But certainly not a, We'll never be in an environment where we're telling people how to run their business or how to be clinicians or how to do things. Our job is to learn from them, not to teach them.
[00:17:09] Griffin Jones: I know that you can't share specific details of any contract negotiation, but can you share, to the extent that you can share, can you think of a recent example where you employed some of that to get a better deal for the partners in your network?
[00:17:23] JT Thompson: Absolutely. I would say it's almost always because of really good data. It's almost always an education process. I think one of the interesting things about our space and the growing nature of it and the growing nature of companies who want to provide this service on behalf of their employee base and insurers who are responding to that by developing products, it is unique and they are, the, having been in other healthcare verticals, whether it was the hospital business or the long term care business or others where the insurance companies have the ability to outdating you and that's frustrating and doesn't necessarily give you a ton of leverage in our space at the moment we're educating payers, we're educating Thanks companies who want to offer this service around the journey and the outcomes and the possibilities.
And that's fun. And they believe it. And so I think showing up in a meeting with a payer where we're toe to toe with them on having, real data to share has been powerful and has helped us create products alongside of them that are good for everybody.
[00:18:29] Griffin Jones: They have the ability to out data you, meaning like they have more information on other clinics and other providers, like what other kinds of data do they have?
[00:18:38] JT Thompson: Or even more than, even more about your own business, right? The traditional insurers of the world have been underwriting, hospital care forever. And if you're a single hospital provider or something smaller and you show up, to a gunfight with a knife, you're in trouble.
And so you want to be on equal playing ground. And I think what we, where we do in our business is we're educating the payers about fertility space. It's not an area they spend a ton of time in. They don't have a ton of history. That's allowed them to create good or bad expectations about it.
So that's been a would say a fun if that's the right word to use, a welcome portion of these conversations is that they're very much collegial and cooperative. And not just negotiating over a nickel.
[00:19:25] Griffin Jones: How do you close the gap between that data powerhouse that they have and like you said, you, you've been able to meet them with a lot of data of your own. How do clinic owners close the gap with big insurance companies?
[00:19:42] JT Thompson: I do think that's one of the value propositions that we bring as we try to expand our own, our own footprint is that we can do that on behalf of people. It would be very tough for, a single clinic owner or a much smaller business to, to walk into.
So I do think that's one of the things that the larger of us in the industry and one of the things that we do well, and we're doing it well not just on our own behalf, but on behalf of the industry. The really cool thing about this space is the untapped market.
[00:20:13] Griffin Jones: I wanna ask about that negotiation of scale and get your opinion on a little difference of viewpoints that I've heard people express.
So the first time I had heard one side of the argument was a practice owner, an independent practice owner, and a. Quite a large market, a top 10 U. S. market a decent size practice more, you could count on more than one hand how many REIs they have. And this person's viewpoint was, the network doesn't really matter in terms of negotiation.
It matters how the market share you have in a particular market. Meaning if you've, if you're in LA and you've got just 5 percent of the market there, and then you're in Seattle, and you have 10 percent of the market there, that doesn't matter as much as having 42 percent of the market in Orlando.
And and then I had David Stern of Boston IVF on the show and he said, no, I don't think so because he said, I think even when you have smaller market share across the country. You have relationships with Blue Cross Blue Shield and you also have precedent like case study. And so I can see both sides to, to those viewpoint. Where do you fall on that?
[00:21:28] JT Thompson: I would say I see both sides as well. To be clear, I think, if you look at our footprint we've certainly attended toward the former, which is, we're the largest provider. and Texas with a large supplier in Florida. There, there are we agree that affords you a seat in the table, whether it's a bigger seat or not.
Certainly it does, but I have to agree with David that across, being able to be in have experience in a number of different markets. helps. I mean learning and again very much appreciate my experience across healthcare service companies and this one's no different is that you know when you're in one market you're in one market.
Even you know Austin's different than San Antonio as close as they are. So you really do need to be tailored to market specific and have those experiences. They could absolutely inform the conversations and as it becomes a national, as we're certainly a national provider and others are as well.
I do think that helps relative to the conversations and just the credibility that we have with these payers and these providers that we do have experience in a number of places that certainly can't hurt.
[00:22:34] Griffin Jones: Coming from other areas of healthcare, when you got to the fertility space, did you find that the insurance companies were doing things in the fertility space that, that you thought hang on, that's not, that's Fair, or just that's not how you do it in other areas, why are we being held to this standard or they were looking at things maybe more scrutinously or taking things that you were presenting at less of value than in other areas of medicine?
[00:23:01] JT Thompson: I don't think so. I don't think their behavior or method of operation is intentionally different across sectors. I just think this is newer. I think it's a smaller piece of the pie to them. And they don't have as much data to understand it. It's evolving. The way the business has evolved certainly it's a baby in and of itself compared to other industries. No, I don't think there's any intentional
[00:23:24] Griffin Jones: no, not intentional, but to your point, because it's smaller, they look at it differently. I
[00:23:28] JT Thompson: think it's, I think it's, I think it's just lack of, I think it's lack of data. I really do. And I think that's, what's been great to be partners with people is to share data and share outcomes and help design products that make sense on behalf of our patients.
[00:23:41] Griffin Jones: What questions do you wish doctors would ask you more frequently?
[00:23:46] JT Thompson: That's a fair question, and I don't know that I have a great immediate response to it. I really I love the interaction with it. It's, again all of the Opportunities I've had across healthcare have really almost exclusively been about having a great relationship with physicians and physician partners and caregivers and clinicians.
And I think just developing their trust that we bring value to the table that helps them do their job better. If I'm having a conversation with a physician a partner, a physician or a clinician where the questions are about, financials or results or then they were probably missing the point, if we're not delivering stuff that they, that makes sense to them, then we've got to get better at it.
Now what are the fun conversations around how do you help us grow? How do you help us add to our existing practices? How do you help us get more efficient? What aren't we doing that we could be doing? Those are where the conversations are super productive, right? How do we grow together?
Again, I think this space has such enormous growth opportunity within existing footprints, right? Just the untapped market share within existing markets is super exciting and I would hope that our partners see that and get excited about it. I think those are the partners that, that, that match the best with us, are the ones who really wanna grow their practice.
[00:25:13] Griffin Jones: Those growth areas are another area where you're not gonna be able to share the specifics of what Inception's doing, but to the extent that you can share what should people be paying attention to, of here's areas that the average practice owner might not be paying attention to, of ways to grow their business.
[00:25:30] JT Thompson: I think it's probably really about how to be very efficient with their own time and their own schedule, I think what the inceptions of the world and the people like us should to do, and certainly what we think we do in our, and try to get better every day and get better, is delivering in a way for them to create efficiency, and I think what I find in this space versus others, is the ability to create more volume and more productivity with the same hours in the day.
That exist which isn't always the case, and I think demonstrating that we can help grow the patient base and the patient volume without necessarily having to add more clinicians is pretty powerful. Now, there's also, we obviously want to grow the businesses by, by, recruiting new partners into these practices and and growing the footprint that way. But I think the opportunity to grow the business With the existing set of resources, it's pretty powerful.
[00:26:27] Griffin Jones: You view Net Promoter Score as a tool that the CFO should have in part of their presentation, argument, review of the data, because I have come to really see efficiency as not just, something that is over here in business operations.It really is.
And I think of a friend recently who told me about going to see a clinic that I know and was not pleased with that experience because her words were, it was archaic. She just felt like everything was archaic. inefficient, slow, unresponsive. And and then she went to another clinic in her city, who I also knew her provider and I know that company, and she was much happier.
So I'm giving all of this context because I wonder if when you're portraying things of, here's how you could be spending your time. Here's ways that you could be spending less time on this and more time on this that people might say, yeah, but I'm the doctor. I have to do this. And I wonder if the net promoter score is a tool that CFOs could use in that toolbox to show, okay, not only is it a efficient use of time, but it's clear that what you're perceiving as personalized care might not be.
[00:27:58] JT Thompson: I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, first of all, I'm a 100 percent believer in the net promoter score mostly because ours outweigh everybody else's industry, so we're the best. So I, I think the concept of it 100 percent makes sense. I've been in industries where I don't think it matters as much. To be honest, here, I know we do well.
Our industry does well. We do better than others. But yes, I think demonstrating that the customer feedback and sharing that is real is, again, very powerful. I think showing good scores and having good experiences and being able to report on it in a way that is actionable, I think is fantastic.
I think that's, again, all of our clinician partners want to do good. They want to deliver a great product. Our company is as TJ very well, founded on patient experience. The entire principle around everything that we do here is patient experience, whether it's in the clinics or any other ancillary businesses we have.
That's the fundamental premise of anything that we do each and every day is patient experience. I have to sit in this chair, CFO or otherwise, and tell you that we absolutely believe it matters. And so the net pro score is great. Ours scored very well. There's obviously other ways to measure it.
I think we've got phenomenal efforts from our, our, our marketing and customer experience efforts that we continue to create data and results that are supporting what we do and point to areas we can improve. So absolutely believe that. That not just the company or our corporate executive reading score can act on it, but it's delivering, tangible feedback that needs to be respected.
[00:29:41] Griffin Jones: As JT mentioned, fertility clinics are often at a disadvantage when negotiating with insurers, but there's a way to offer patients more certainty and peace of mind. 70% of IVF patients need more than one cycle, and with costs piling up, especially with medications. Bundle steps in to offer a guarantee.
Patients get coverage from multiple cycles, including optional add ons so they know exactly what their financial commitment is up front. By partnering with Bundle, fertility clinics can offer their patients not just a service but peace of mind. To learn more about how Bundle can help you support your patients with transparent, guaranteed pricing, head over to BundlFertility.com.
That's B U N D L Fertility. com and empower your practice to provide a better financial experience for your patients. patients and a more favorable experience for your clinic. As a CFO, how do you think about accurate forecasting and not forecasting for the sake of putting numbers in? An example that I have outside of this field is my first job out of college, I was radio ad sales, Clear Channel, I think it's called iHeartRadio now, but at the time they were the biggest radio company in the country and 100 percent commission only.
Sales, here's the phone book kid, go close a couple deals as a 21 year old, go figure out how to get this 55 year old business owner to give you some of his money. And that was their model and each radio station had probably 10 sales reps and a cluster in a big market would have five or six radio stations.
And so across the country, you had somebody at the top, Some CFO, JT, decided that we need forecasts for what we're going to sell this year. And in a model like that, it was just BS. It was just saying I have no idea how many deals I'm going to close because I'm knocking on doors.
I'm, column people and sometimes I get a whale and sometimes I don't but it was, it was making these projections so that somebody could present it to somebody in a board and it was all BS. So how do you approach forecasting so that, it's accurate?
[00:31:53] JT Thompson: I'm going to give you an answer that that may make sense given what you just described. One of the lines that I use each and every time is that the second that I'm or anybody in our role is finished with a forecast or a budget, it's exactly what's not, what not is going to happen, right? It's just by its nature. We're going to be wrong, right? It's not going to be accurate.
That said I think the, it is important to have your pulse on the near and medium term expectations. I think it can absolutely help us manage our businesses efficiently. And I think about forecasting in the way not traditional CFO, here's the budget for next year, here's a five year forecast of our business.
Those are things that, in my role, I have to do for, lenders or boards or other constituents and for ourselves but the reality of a forecast that helps the business run is what's happening over the next month, the next three months, what do we see that's happening, and what does that mean for us?
What does that mean for staffing the business efficiently? Again, we're no different than a lot of healthcare businesses. We need to be really good about knowing who's coming to the door when. Whether it's the hospitality business where you have to staff a hotel based on volume that weekend we need to know, we need to have good visibility into what's, what are these full walls going to look like next week and next month and the next three months and that way we can help our businesses be efficient.
So I do believe strongly in, in the benefit of near and medium term forecasting and I get the traditional, longer range forecasting that we need to do as a business. They're very, very important just used differently I think.
[00:33:28] Griffin Jones: How do you view the difference between what are actually key performance indicators and metrics?
because I think people tend to mix things up and think that, any metric is a KPI and. In most departments, at most levels, there's probably not that many, right? There's probably four, five, six key performance indicators that are leading indicators that, that people really need to pay attention to.
And everything else is just a metric that if one of those KPIs is really off, then you dig into the metrics to see why that KPI is off. But really you're. The numbers that you're paying attention to, your scorecard, probably isn't that long of a list. What do you think are the key performance indicators for most providers in our field and what are metrics?
[00:34:19] JT Thompson: You're still in my stump speech. I think the my, my story as I put teams together and join firms like ours and partnerships is, it's not one thing that you need to see, and it's not 10. What are the three things that you really need to see, or the four things that you really need to see?
And you're spot on. There's a handful of things that matter. Volume metrics are important to our business. Obviously what, what does it look like to have, a retrieval or what does it have to ultimately have, A successful, pregnancy, all of these things are true.
I think in our case, we need to understand the types of services that we're doing for any particular patient along the journey because they can be different. And so there's a handful of things that I think are pure, I'll call them volume related that are important to me as a business every single day and delivering that, that information to our operators and our physician partners as regularly and as timely as we can helps understand, what's, how do we manage the business that we have in front of us?
What type of patient is it? For more information visit www. FEMA. gov what services are they looking for? So those are about it, there's a couple of metrics there. To your other point, without getting overly I'm also, while I really love data and I love to report on it and I love to stare at it and see what it's teaching me.
I don't want to look at 20 metrics every week or every month either but there are things that we can then look at a little bit retrospectively to learn from. I would tell you that in my chair and I know I share this with TJ and all of our executive team, you'd much rather be looking through the windshield than the rear view mirror.
I just think that's the way to run a business is to see what's ahead of you, not what was behind you. But you really do need a handful of things looking backwards to learn. We allow our monthly reporting that looks more like traditional, financial reporting with metrics to spot trends, to see things that can help us. But the real KPI activity is about looking at the windshield.
[00:36:10] Griffin Jones: What do you view as it, it's a resource. Maybe if you can think of one like it, a book that you might recommend to people that are. I'm particularly thinking of young, the younger doctors that might be listening. I'm, I probably should just make this a default question that we send to our guests ahead of time so that I didn't give you a chance to think about it.
But I, when you think back, do you think of a couple of aha moments? That that were either from either mentors or maybe it was something you read or just, lessons that you carry on and go back to fairly frequently.
[00:36:46] JT Thompson: I would tell you most of this conversation this morning, Griffin, is really bounded on a couple of aha moments early on in my career around measuring what matters being efficient.
I was in some businesses early on that struggled where you really had to batten down the hatches and understand what was important. I don't have a, I don't have a book that I would particularly point to, although I'm a reasonably I wouldn't call it voracious, but I do love to read business books and theory books and management books.
I don't have one that I would, that I hand out to my teams necessarily. I do think it's a, in my case, it's a cumulative set of experiences. But I'll, there are a couple points to your question where and my theme here of KPIs, important KPIs really came from an operating partner I had in a business where we were, we were fighting to make sure the business was going to work and he said, you got to give me, you have to give me these three things.
I have to trust it and you have to give it to me right early. And if you do, we can turn this business around. And we did. What were those three things? And so I just said. And in that case, it was a, it was a hospital business and it was staffing metrics and volume metrics and and how to manage that.
But again, it's a principle around, what is it that, what is it that matters? And I think so those are, there have been aha moments. I was lucky enough to start my career and spend most of my career in businesses that are all up and to the right which is, a finance guy wants to look at a, you want to look at a chart or graph.
Up to the traditional, CFO in the ear, you want everything to be going up and to the right. Growth is good. And I've been blessed to be in, in almost always businesses that are like that. But the couple of times you spend in businesses that are going, not the way you'd hope for whatever the reasons would be, you learn the most about yourself and the people around you when times are tough.
And you build from that. Those are just the, I would say the grounding couple of principles that, that keep me grounded and that I bring to each opportunity I get to be part
[00:38:38] Griffin Jones: of. How do you think about assessing some things that are at least partly speculative? So I guess I'm I'm viewing as a CFO, you want to remove as much speculation as humanly possible.
I. I believe that there's probably some that you can't remove, and I think of, if we go to this office here, here's what we could project, or if we get time lapse imaging, here's what we could do, but there's always assumptions embedded, and I think Yeah, especially when you think of brand driven companies, especially when it comes to some things with the brand, there's a je that is hard to project. Do you, does any kind of quoi make a CFO's skin crawl? Or how do you think about future value that, maybe can't be 100 percent accurately reflected in projections?
[00:39:38] JT Thompson: So this is where I'll another area where I'll deviate from the central casting CFO. I'm pretty comfortable in the speculative area. I'm pretty comfortable not, I don't want to use the word risk but I'm okay trusting conclusions that people collectively make that are built around assumptions we all agree on, even if we end up being wrong. And I think you can learn from me at RON. I'm not a so I'm not as, that doesn't scare me. It doesn't give me the shivers as you just described around, no, that's too speculative. We can't do that. I'm, I like to learn from most types of things. So I'm very comfortable in areas that aren't as cut and dried. I'm quite comfortable operating in, in an environment where.A bunch of smart people are making assumptions together and making decisions together based on that. And if we're wrong, we pivot quickly.
[00:40:24] Griffin Jones: How do you view timeline in terms of when someone's saying, Hey, I think this will be really good for the return on investment, but maybe it's not. It's a little bit longer of a timeline than than makes sense for if you have investor obligations, that it's we've got to increase value, we have to be able to turn this thing around within a certain amount of time and you have people saying we definitely need this for the long term, doesn't, in the, at least in the, maybe 24 month forecast, it's, it doesn't, It's probably not going to work. How do you think about those types of dilemmas?
[00:41:02] JT Thompson: Sure. I, what I would tell you, and this is probably in the in the vein of investors or partners or folks who are expecting timelines. I view that you make decisions about running and managing a business as if you're going to operate forever, as if you have a long timeline and those always lead to the best decisions.
I don't, I try never to be in a position where I'm We choose not to do something because we think this can take two years and we really need something that's going to work in six months. Now, they both types of projects exist and it's a little bit of nirvana probably for me to describe that, that you'd like to make all of the decisions that way.
But it's certainly where I start and where this team starts is, what's best for the long haul. What's best, this is the business that we're building. For a really long period of time and whether it's, one of the other ancillary service businesses we might get in or whether it's, changes to things that we do to help our practices be better we're not measuring it with it has to produce something in six months or it's a bad idea.
If we think it's, if we think it's the best investment and the best thing to do to build this business for the long haul, then. We're all gonna get behind it. I appreciate the nature of the question, which is, I don't, I, whether I had a a lender or investor or a shareholder who, had a different viewpoint I I wouldn't present everything as well. It's gonna take us 10 years, but let's do it. I think that's a little unrealistic. But I really try to make decisions that are independent of. Some artificial timeline. I
[00:42:31] Griffin Jones: said I stole half of your stump speech, but I'll the other half is yours to conclude this show with however you'd like.
[00:42:38] JT Thompson: But look, I appreciate the time. As you and I talked about, and I'm happy to be the first in this role, hopefully of many. And I think there's a lot of I'm biased about my specific set of training and those like me who can be great partners to our executive teams and to our our operating partners across in our case a set of brands.
My role and it's been a blast to play it here alongside of TJ and our great executive team at Inception and had, a handful of experiences like it where I think that's what I consider my toolkit around, businesses that are at this size and with this significant growth opportunity.
How to bring those experiences to bear. I think my favorite philosophy, if you will is experience sharing. I don't think you tell people what to do. I don't think you, you try hard not to. I try hard not to say, this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it. What I like to fall back on is this is, I saw this before, I've seen this challenge before, this opportunity before, and here's how we did it, and it's changed.
I wonder if it'll work here. That's just a philosophy that I try to do, whether it's building the team or whether it's, presenting new opportunities. It's, how do you bring, how do you bring experience to bear? So probably my best partner philosophy I can have is at this stage with the set of experience I've got is how can I best utilize those and help people.
[00:43:55] Griffin Jones: BT Thompson, CFO of Inception Fertility. I look forward to having you back on. Thanks for coming on this time to the Inside Reproductive Health podcast.
[00:44:03] JT Thompson: Griffin, great being with you. Have a great day, man.
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[00:44:21] Announcer: Today's advertiser helped make the production and delivery of this episode possible for free to you. But the themes expressed by the guests do not necessarily reflect the views of Inside Reproductive Health, nor of the advertiser. The advertiser does not have editorial control over the content of this episode, and the guest's appearance is not an endorsement of the advertiser. Thank you for listening to Inside Reproductive Health.
