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There’s a challenge in finding the balance between keeping both your staff and patients happy. On this episode of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin gets Dr. Peter Klatsky’s take on managing everyone’s satisfaction while providing a new standard of care. Working with his partners at Spring Fertility in California, their goal is to provide their patients a level of service that isn’t seen anywhere else, all while keeping their employees happy and in for the long haul.
Learn more about Dr. Klatsky and Spring Fertility by visiting www.springfertility.com/
Read about the work done by Mama Rescue and support their vision by visiting www.mamarescue.org/
To get started on a marketing plan for your company, complete the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic at FertilityBridge.com.
Other episodes mentioned in Episode 54:
Ep. 50, Dr. Pietro Bortoletto
Ep. 54, TJ Farnsworth
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Welcome to Inside Reproductive Health, the shoptalk of the fertility field. Here, you'll hear authentic and unscripted conversations about practice management, patient relations, and business development from the most forward-thinking experts in our field.
Wall Street and Silicon Valley both want your patients, but there is a plan if you're willing to take action. Visit fertilitybridge.com to learn about the first piece of building a Fertility Marketing System--The Goal and Competitive Diagnostic. Now, here's the founder of Fertility Bridge and the host of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones.
GRIFFIN JONES 0:51
Today on Inside Reproductive Health, I'm joined by the Co-Founder of Spring Fertility. Dr. Peter Klatsky graduated with honors from Mount Sinai, from medical school in New York. He completed his residency in OB/GYN at University of California San Francisco, and his fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology at Brown University. Dr. Klatsky is an innovator who's deeply passionate about improving public access to the best possible obstetric and fertility care. Dr. Klatsky worked as a human rights activist in Asia and Africa prior to med school. Among some of his achievements is founding Mama Rescue, which is a cloud-based mobile dispatch and transportation platform that helps women in rural Uganda access skilled and emergency obstetric care. Dr. Klatsky is proud to have founded Spring Fertility with Dr. Tran to deliver the best possible outcomes at a new standard of care not seen anywhere. We're going to talk about what that means today. Welcome to Inside Reproductive Health, Dr. Klatsky. Peter, great to have you on the show.
PETER KLATSKY 1:51
Thanks, Griffin. It’s a pleasure to be here.
JONES 1:52
So I want to talk about what that means to the standard of care not seen anywhere, but I want to talk about what that vision for Spring Fertility is because there's a pretty common trajectory for a lot of people to either join up with an existing group or to maybe start their own, which is less common because it's harder to start one's own group now. You've done it with a pretty impressive speed and starting to be scaled, so what was it that made you want to do that in the first place? What was the void in the marketplace that you thought this is what I could add to it?
KLATSKY 2:33
Well, you know, I think it starts with seeing an opportunity to practice medicine the way I always dreamed, and I felt that, for a variety of reasons in the places that I was, I wasn't able to practice and kind of medicine that I wanted to practice. I was fortunate enough to have a best friend from residency, who I went through fellowship with and that was Dr. Nam Tran. He was practicing at UCSF, I was practicing at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And we both had wonderful academic medical careers, but when it came to the practice of seeing patients and the way in which we wanted to deliver care, for a variety of reasons, we weren't able to practice the way we wanted to in a larger academic center. We then also noted that most of the major innovations in our field had come from the private sector. So they had come from--people came before us who we were fortunate enough to follow, people like Bill Schoolcraft at CCRM, where he worked with one of our partners now, Dr. Deb Minjaraz, who's brilliant and amazing; people like Richard Scott, who really, really innovated; people like Ana Cobo and her colleagues over in Spain. And so Nam and I woke up and we said, “Gosh, the really big game-changing innovations in our field seem to have come not through NIH funding--which is near to absent in our field or at least in the IVF component of our field--but were coming from from the terrific, world-class private fertility centers that invested their own money and time to research and develop.” So there was a combination of one, we could leave academic medicine, and still do provide the cutting edge care and actually provide it an even more cutting edge and even more rapid way. We could control the kind of research that we wanted to and try to push the field forward. And then two, from a patient experience standpoint, there were so many areas where we felt like we wouldn't have been--we were not able to serve patients the way we would have wanted to be cared for if we were the patient. And so we may add to that, that I'm having this conversation with my best friend, who we happen to be on different sides of the country. But we--blue sky, what would it be like if we had our own practice, we can do it the way we wanted to do it, and what would that vision look like? And then we were fortunate to have two other close friends who happened to be the best embryologists on the West Coast who also shared our vision and they wanted to push the field forward. And, you know, in their words, they felt like they were, while at wonderful institutions, but felt that if they had stayed there, they would be practicing the same way 10 years from now, that they were at that time. And so the four of us came together and sort of had this idea that, what would it look like if we were starting from scratch from the patient experience from the patient care? And what we look like in the lab, if we could take the best technology available and then imagine what technology might bring us over the next 10 or 15 years? And how would we design and build a lab? And then after about a year to a year and a half of planning and thoughtful analysis, we then decided to take this jump.
JONES 5:55
So I want to come back to that question of the lab and Spring’s perspective on the lab, but I want to explore this idea of why you felt you couldn't pursue the way you wanted to practice medicine or build your own infrastructure in the academy, because I've only talked about the academic side of our field really once on the show with Dr. Pietro Bortoletto, and I'm having a few more guests on to talk about it in 2020, because I realized that it's a void that we really haven't covered. I've done a little bit of business with academic centers, and the very smallest consulting engagements are like a bureaucratic nightmare to go through the red tape. So I can infer why you might not have been able to realize the practice of medicine that you would want to realize in the academy, but describe why you had to take your vision out of it, and it's probably beyond NIH funding, I'm guessing.
KLATSKY 6:55
Yeah, I think that one of the draws to an academic center is to do amazing research and to do amazing teaching. And the thing that you still can do in a great academic institution is provide terrific teaching and you can teach residents, medical students fellows, and that is incredibly rewarding. In a private sector practice, you can also continue to teach. We have residents come to Spring Fertility from an endocrinology group; we have new physicians who are--when you join Spring Fertility, before you see a patient, you'll probably spend another two to three months just training with us, learning our protocols and our perspectives on how to deliver care. So we haven't lost that teaching angle. From a public funding, whether it's the NIH or somebody else, there's just not a lot of research dollars into the really exciting stuff that we do. One, it involves human embryos. And two, it's not a high priority for the NIH. From a bureaucratic standpoint, I share some of your frustrations. At one point had over a quarter million dollars of funding from the World Bank to do maternal mortality research in Uganda and that was matched by several other private foundations and be able to deploy funds that we already got, you had to go through multiple layers. And so you can imagine what it's like as a vendor trying to, you know, work with your services. But even more than that, from a patient--to get at what it means to be a provider, occasionally you’d have a patient who wanted to be seen earlier, so she could get to work and you knew she had a very stressful job and it was important for her to be seen and out of the office by 7:30. So Nam or myself, we're pretty committed to our patients--well, we're not pretty, we're very committed to our patients and we're willing to come in at 7am. But in a center that you don't have control over the resources, there might not be a nurse or a medical assistant to help you do an ultrasound, and therefore you can't do that. So often times you'd say, “Well, I'd like to come in and see this patient this time. No, that's not available. We don't have the staffing for that.” And so when you have control over the system set-up, you can set up so that something that would be incredibly popular like earlier monitoring hours is a viable option for your patients.
JONES 9:09
Yeah, it seems to point out, the nuance between where the standard of care begins in the form of whether it's best business practices or simply is now the standard of care. To me, it's not immediately obvious. It's something I talk a lot about on the show, but you're talking about being able to accommodate patients in a way that works for them. That might be best business practices, and therefore, is favored by the private sector, but at what point is it just the standard of care?
KLATSKY 9:44
Yeah, I don't like to think in terms of best business practices, but I like to think in terms of what's best for my patient. And--
JONES 9:51
Well, that's what I mean, Peter. I think we divorce those two concepts, but customer service at one point is patient service.
KLATSKY 10:00
Yeah. 100%. And so, you know, that's where you--I mean, all really takes us is looking at, what would I want if I was a patient? Right? And then it takes a little more effort to figure out how would I change my system? For example, we have two shifts of nurses. Why do we have two shifts of nurses? Because that's the only way we can have patients come in early and also get results to patients in the afternoon. But that's not the way most larger institutions are set up. And that's also not the way an institution, even private sector institutions, are set up because if you were the only fertility center in New York City in 1992, you didn't have to worry about what patients wanted, right? You had 6-12 month waitlists, whatever you did, and you could make the patients jump through whatever hoops were necessary and they could go through that bureaucratic maze and the doctor could get there, have the best parking spot in the lot, and then show up at the time that was convenient for the clinic or for the provider, and patients would wait. And what we're seeing today is that patients do demand more and a place like Spring Fertility that actually thinks what would I want if I was the patient is going to continue to grow and have incredibly positive patient experiences, if other centers aren't gonna do the same thing.
JONES 11:20
Which really makes me wonder how someone can worry about what the patient wants, while also serving the patient. So we've had others on the show and have talked about the CEO role. And a lot of companies now have a Chief Executive Officer who is in charge of the C-suite and they manage all of the business and mostly the physicians are often their advisors, but it's effectively the employees of the company. There's a few folks like yourself who are physician-led groups, who are in the entrepreneurial seat and in the physician seats. So you didn't have to worry or a physician didn't have to worry about what patients wanted in 1992. You, Peter Klatsky, very much do. And you also have patient caseload you have to do retrievals You're still an REI within the practice group, as well as being an entrepreneur that leads the vision and the scale and the future value of the group. How are you able to do both things at the same time? Because I'm just running a client services firm. And it ain't frickin’ easy! How do you manage it?
KLATSKY 12:36
Not alone. And so I focus during the day from 7am until 6pm, I focus entirely on my patients. And when I'm focusing on my patients, that's going to inform what Spring Fertility should do from an operational perspective. I'm lucky that no part of Spring has been Peter Klatsky alone at all. I have the best partner in the world, Dr. Nam Tran, who is the smartest person I know. And in addition to being the smartest scientist and physician I know, he's also the best operational leader that one can have. And we were very fortunate early on to hire really terrific people. So we have a Chief Operating Officer who is excellent at taking our vision and managing the day to day operations. We just hired an amazing woman who is running our VP of Operations and she came from DeVita which is a large healthcare organization where she takes a lot of the structure and organizational stuff. And so, you know, between Derald and Marin, and then we've got an array of additional folks who we have both given direction to and who we trust to carry out that direction and trust to check in with us. So we have weekly check-in meetings. And when Nam and I are seeing patients, we're getting feedback so that we know how to adjust operations, right? When I'm seeing patients and I hear somebody’s frustrated about something, we respond not, you know, in a month or in two months, we respond that day. And our team is all motivated. So the other important thing is to make sure you have a happy team and that you empower those people. So we were so fortunate to hire Dr. Deb Manjarez, who is now the Co-Medical Director of Spring Fertility, and oversees medical operations and process on par alongside of Dr. Tran. And so the way we do it is not the way--your question is sort of well, how do you do it? I don't. We have an amazing team that together functions really well, and we complement each other. And what we share also is a vision for how to be--everybody who joins Spring wants to deliver the best service for their patients. And we define services in equal parts, patient experience and clinical outcomes. And everybody knows that second best isn't good enough. And so we're united by a desire to deliver the best experience for our patients, the best care for our patients and a desire to be the best at that. And then we hire wonderful people. We hire people who are effective operationally, but also fun to hang out with. And so we have a great time hanging out tonight, I'm going out to dinner with all of the providers and we've got a dinner for eight with some of our key management people and the providers and it's going to be our end of your last physician meeting. We have a physician meeting every month. Everybody has an equal weight, everybody has an equal say. And we take feedback, whether it's from our patients, or our teammates, other physicians incredibly seriously. If you join Spring--and now we're seven physicians--if you join Spring and you have a suggestion for something you think we can do better, we want to hear it. We don't want somebody else to come up with that idea. And we want to make sure that we hire the best docs and that we keep those docs and we make sure they're happy. And in California, there's no non-competes either, right? So, it is all about making sure your team is empowered, you have the right people, and everybody communicates well. And also a lot of hard work, late hours, but I think the thing that’s allowed Spring to effectively scale thus far, has been a team of people who all complement each other.
JONES 16:29
It started with two, how does your skill set and Dr. Tran’s skill set? Where do they overlap and where do they diverge?
KLATSKY 16:40
You know, usually this is where I would make a joke and say that I'm better looking and more charming. And that he’s good at managing the plantings around our office and some of the wires that sometimes get tangled but all kidding aside, that's a total joke! I think that Nam is and always has been the smartest guy in our field for as long as I've known him, and just one of the smartest people I've ever met. And I'm comfortable enough to recognize that and confident--or smart enough to recognize that and confident enough to let him run most operational practices and not feel threatened by him saying, “Hey, I think we should do it this way.” When I've been doing a different way. I think that there are areas where I have strengths that maybe complement areas where he's not quite as strong. And both of us, if we had to argue over everything, or if we had ego around, who would get to do this or who would lead that, it would just slow us down and get in our way and it would affect our relationship. We really also like each other. So even though we're quite different, but because we like each other, it creates an environment where the nurses like working with us because we're going to be having more fun, we're going to probably be making fun of each other and we're going to be supporting each other. And we're never going to worry about who took more calls or who did a little bit more work on one thing or another. We're both trying to make sure we're not holding the other person back. And then when you have that environment, and you bring in somebody like Deb Manjarez, Isiah Harris, these are incredibly brilliant physicians, who are also committed to that same vision--give patients the best clinical experience possible. And one of the most amazing things that I've experienced--and then on the lab side, we’re led by just an amazing team of embryologists and there's two married embryologists who we started with Sergio Vaccari, Simona Torcia, and they just deliver the best--not only the best quality work, and constantly trying to push the envelope for innovation and to improve outcomes--but they also create an environment in the lab that is a wonderful place to work. So we're able to attract and retain top embryology talent. But I think, if I were to shorten it and try to make it more concise--Nam manages detailed operating protocols, and I probably manage some of the vision voice, and I'm very attentive to the patient experience.
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JONES 21:26
Well, where operating protocols and vision come together, Spring is often known for its vision for the lab, it's functional outlay of the lab, and looking at the lab very differently from how IVF labs have been structured in the past. When people say that, what are they referring to?
KLATSKY 21:45
Well, there's a lot of things we do uniquely in the lab, but the flow in our lab is extremely efficient, and designed to prevent minimal movements and to minimize any risks to embryos or eggs. With regard to egg and embryo storage, everything has not just redundancy, but two layers of redundancy. There are some things we do very uniquely in our lab. We are the--I believe we are the only practice in the country that injects and does ICSI on eggs in a hypoxic environment. That's the same ambient air quality that exists in the incubators. We are the only lab in the country that does the same thing from egg retrieval, so when the eggs are being retrieved from somebody's body, they immediately go into an isolette while the embryologist is looking at them, where the carbon dioxide level is 5% and the oxygen level is 5%. So that's matching what it is in the fallopian tubes. I don't know of any center that's doing that currently and to be honest, we weren't able to do that when we built the lab because the technology didn't exist to lower the oxygen, to displace oxygen in the isolette. And within two years of opening, we were able to do that, but we built the infrastructure in our lab so they can do that. So we have nitrogen gas and CO2 gas throughout our lab. And we have other infrastructure that's anticipating what technology will bring five years from now. That is amazing innovation that we, you know, I credit 100% to Dr. Tran and his vision for what the lab--the IVF lab will look like in 2025.
JONES 23:22
I think of innovation like that, which is groundbreaking in some ways and other things that other people are doing and it harkens back to something that TJ Farnsworth had said on the show a few weeks ago. And I actually really agree with that I've thought about both before and even more sense. I want to see if you agree first off, if you don't, why, and if you do, what do you think can be done about it, but his sentiment with coming from the oncology field was that there is less peer-to-peer sharing of best operations practices, of best practices both from a business and clinical setting. And I really do see that, Peter. I really see it from independent owners, especially, I think where everybody feels like they've got the secret sauce. And maybe you're a guy that really does have the secret sauce and you think, “Well, I do and I don't want to share with folks that are doing the same.” First, do you see it that way? Do you see that our field isn't nearly as collaborative as it could be? Why or why not?
KLATSKY 24:26
I don't. I think--I don't see it that way and I’m sad that TJ feels that way. I actually think that there are--I started this off by saying we followed great minds and great practices that shared their advances in our field. And I don't think oncology even moves as quickly as the field of fertility does and oncology moves incredibly quickly! But why do we have egg freezing? Because of a commitment to have somebody in Japan carried forth with clinical trials performed in Spain and those publications came out in 2010 and by 2012, egg freezing was no longer considered experimental in Europe or the US and people weren’t traveling to other places to learn how to do that. I think that Richard Scott and Bill Schoolcraft, shared advances in pre-implantation genetic testing with the field. So I don't know that there's been a lack of peer-to-peer sharing, even when people have secrets--before we opened up the lab, we had Barry Behr who's lab director for Stanford, which is maybe 40 miles away, walk through our lab and tour it with us. And the professionals in our field, I expect that they do share. So I know the embryologists are constantly sharing with each other what they're doing because they have long-standing relationships. Kind of like when Nam was at UCSF and I was at Einstein--we’d always talk about what each other was doing. So and, you know, all of us have peers and colleagues and other centers, so I have not seen that that much. I do think people are tied to their practices. I think maybe some of the older docs and we're a pretty young group, but maybe some of the older dots don't want to change the way they're doing it and that's what he's referring to. And so they say, “Oh, this is really special, because this is the way, I've always done it.” But I think most innovations have been pretty--it's hard to keep secrets in our field, you know, trade secrets, because our trade secrets are information and knowledge. For example, what I just shared with you on your podcast to everybody, I know nobody else is doing hypoxic ICSI. But I haven’t k been shy about that since we've opened that, you know, and maybe people will start doing it. You have to buy into something and believe that there's a benefit to it. But I don't think we're really secretive.
JONES 26:49
I see both sides. I definitely see enough examples of both--and perhaps you're right that there is an age difference. I think there's probably a practice structure difference. The people that I see sharing are the people that you mentioned, plus yourself, plus TJ--the people that are growing groups pretty quickly and adding a lot of new things tend to share. And then there are probably another class of folks that they want to hold on to their piece of their particular market. And I often find those folks are reluctant to talk to the folks across the street or have nice things to say about the folks across the street or are reluctant to meet with them or join some of the broader groups. And so--
KLATSKY 27:40
Embryologists do. And that's where--so if they're acting that way, that's what's silly. They may not be, but your embryologists are. When your nurses are at ASRM, they're sharing. And your junior docs who both went through fellowship together are sharing with each other. So that's where we try not to be--we try to have good collegiate relationships with everybody. And we always want it. And the great thing about our field is it doesn't stand still. So what is amazingly cutting edge today in five years, four years, maybe standard of care, and you'll have to continually move the needle. And that's where, like, to really, really keep growing, you're going to have to attract and keep the best people who all have that future in mind, you know, all want to move the field forward so we have better patient outcomes, so we can provide a better patient experience, and I guess that part you need to really give voice to your new hires. So that doc who is straight out of fellowship, hey, you know, maybe that's the person who's going to be Richard Scott or Bill Schoolcraft in 20 years. So listen to the suggestions that they have and take that opportunity.
JONES 28:55
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question is does it become binary for talent recruitment and how you’re able to build your group? Because I belong to a few different masterminds of owners of other creative firms and our fertility marketing blueprint took us years to build the way it is. It is a really good strategy piece. It allows us to make sure that almost any group is going to be successful if it's done right and it took us years to do and I willingly share it with other agency owners and I just tell them, If you decide that you're now going to go into fertility field with this, you'll burn in business development hell, but other than that, I'm not making people sign an NDA. I'm not--I'm just sharing it with other peers and so that they can use it to help.
KLATSKY 29:49
People like you, Griffin, and you're becoming a thought leader in our field, so people are going to want to always have your thoughts and opinions and so I think that makes sense!
JONES 30:02
Well, to your point, though, I can't keep secret sauce anyway, there is no secret sauce! The embryologists are talking to each other, the nurses are talking to each other, the junior docs are, they're talking with their pharma reps who come in who are talking with other folks. And so it's either you're either offense of this is what we're doing and I'm doing a podcast episode every single week and Peter’s sharing his version of ICSI on the podcast with everyone and sharing that and bringing that to the field on offense. You’re on defense and I'm starting to see the folks that are struggling with that. But to me, it's binary. There is no maintaining the secret sauce. You've talked about how you are building a team based on that ethos. How else are you building the team to be collaborative? Like what's the structure of Spring’s team that makes sure that it's one of as you say, advancing the core value of what's in the best interest of the patient?
KLATSKY 31:02
We onboard people slowly--providers, you know, most places you're seeing patients a week out. A provider out of fellowship will probably take a minimum of two months before they're seeing their first new patient and more likely closer to four. We maintain regular full-team meetings where we talk about clinical issues and also practice issues. And what we have built and, I guess, modeled from the top down is a relatively flat system or flat operating system. So that a medical assistant who you may have just heard somebody knock on my door, nobody feels timid about knocking on anybody's door at Spring Fertility and if a physician is running five minutes late, that means a patient's been waiting for too long. And so everybody's instructed to let that patient, that physician know and are empowered to do so. So we've actually a small waiting room at Spring Fertility. If ever you’re in San Francisco come by and people are usually surprised because patients don't wait here. And that's because the physician would be in trouble, regardless of who the physician is, if a patient's waiting for them. And next, you know, a core value is that the patients come first. And everybody gets a copy of our mission statement. Everybody knows what our pillars are and everybody is oriented for two days, every single hire, whether you're in the finance area or whether you're in a clinical operations area, to understand what that mission is. And we try to hire well, we try to screen for people who are interested in that mission before we bring people on.
JONES 32:36
That’s another thing, when I say binary is offense and defense, it's really who do you want to work with and for and who do you not want to work with and for. And in order to attract people who are self motivated, the values and the reinforcement of the values, the reiteration of them, I think is critical. And I think in that group of clinics that were founded in, let's say, the mid- to late 1990s, many of those don't have them. And I think part of the reason why some of them are starting to struggle now is because they're not built in this way, which is not only just built for talent--excuse me, built for patients, but also built to attract talent. So where do you see this going in the next decade, let's say in terms of, I guess, what you want to do with Spring, but where you see the field really starting to bear to some of the demands that have been eking the past couple years?
KLATSKY 33:46
I think the field is growing expansively and massively and so I think that it will continue to be growth in our field, driven by demand for IVF services as women continue to have their first child and start families later on in life, but also with the advent of egg freezing as people get more comfortable with that technology, as we have more data on the on the viability of that technology, I think people will demand more. And our patients are more demanding and they're used to having an individualized and personal experience. And so the centers that are able to provide that, and are able to provide a patient experience will grow. And those that want to continue putting the doctor first as opposed to the patient will see, probably see a retraction in their market share. And clinics like ours where people like working together. I said last night we went out to dinner with a new physician recruitment candidate, and she was lovely and the team was just happy to be out together for dinner. As I mentioned tonight, we’re actually having another dinner with all the physicians and providers and then we're having a party for our entire staff and their partners on Friday night, our holiday party. And so, like, Spring is a fun place to work. We, every quarter, we do something as a team and not, you know, they're usually not boring. And sometimes they're arguably too fun, but we really try to make sure everybody in the organization feels valued and that people enjoy being around each other. And so if you can do--and I think that's a critical element to the patient experience. It is almost impossible to deliver a wonderful patient experience if your team does not like working together. In order to make patients happy, you have to start by making your staff happy and share that vision that what we're doing is important and it's about the patient.
JONES 35:38
Yeah, the old adage had been shareholders first, customers second, employees third. I think many forward-thinkers have corrected in our field. You could say it’s employees first, patients second in that case, because for the exact reason that you described,
KLATSKY 35:57
I don't want to say that because I think the patients come first. But almost like in order to--
JONES 36:03
You have to say that because you're a doctor! If you were just a business owner, not a physician, you wouldn't have to say that because I'll say it right now in front of everybody, clients come second. If any of my clients are listening, and most of them do, they know my employees come first. And if I felt like my employees were not someone that put the client's interests at the top of their mind and were willing to go the extra mile, they wouldn't be on my team to begin with. But if it ever came down to you know--if a client ever dog-cussed an employee, I would rip them apart in front of the whole team just to boost morale.
KLATSKY 36:40
Yeah, and I wouldn’t rip apart a patient, we're very sensitive with our patients. But you can have both. Let’s agree you can have both, that they're both critically important. Your mission is about your patients, but you can’t fulfill that mission if your staff’s unhappy or feels like you're, you're in any way not doing right by them.
JONES 36:59
I just don't think that can be understated that when employees, when team members are happy, they take really good care of the people that they're supposed to be taking care of. And that's true in medicine as well as client services. I wasn't going to ask you about this, it wasn't on my list, but I do want to talk about your endeavors for social good, particularly in Uganda. One of the reasons why I started my own company is because I want to be a philanthropist. But for me, they're very much separate, I guess that my business is what I do to make money so that I can give money to the organizations that I care about. We're not like TOMS Shoes where we're selling a pair of shoes and then another pair goes to the individual in need. For you, are your endeavors for social good, very much infused with Spring or is Spring a business venture that helps you to contribute in the ways that you want to?
KLATSKY 37:56
So I think it’s all infused. So first, Spring is about providing really excellent care to people on a really important level. So if you're an infertility patient, been trying for the last 12 months to get pregnant, and every period feels like a wound and a stabbing insult and pain and injury, then providing sensitive, compassionate fertility care, you know, is a social good in it’s own right. Helping somebody preserve their future fertility and their options and empowering them to go on their next date and not feel stressed, like it has to be the guy they're going to marry for somebody who's going to freeze eggs is a social good. So I feel like I'm so fortunate that the business or profession that I'm in, just doing my job is a social good. You know, now I'm passionate also about just reproductive health globally and reducing disparities in care. And so the Mama Rescue program that I started in Uganda was really successful. And we were funded by the World Bank, by UNICEF, and basically I had a decision to make whether I was going to get out of the fertility space and go full-time into the nonprofit space or go all into the fertility space and I chose the ladder. And in the way, we sort of married those two things. Right now is that Spring Fertility is actually making a donation, sort of like TOMS shoes. So we make a donation for every person we get pregnant at Spring Fertility. Last month, we authorized a $24,000 payment to the agencies running Mama Rescue and that will provide for every pregnancy we have, we provide for two women in rural Africa to get an emergency transport in the event of an obstetric emergency, and to transport 10 women to a health center for skilled obstetric care. And we do that with every pregnancy achieved at Spring. And so that's where we get to marry, you know, helping women who can afford advanced reproductive technologies and advanced medical care in the United States, with women who are no less deserving in an environment--in an area with far fewer resources, and try to connect those two worlds through our shared humanity, and that's something that's been important since we started. You know, I mentioned that Nam Tran is the smartest person I know, you know, he came to the United States as a refugee. Like, my God, if Donald Trump was president, you know, 40 years ago, you know, we might not have had the benefit of having somebody like him in our country. And so we still believe in that shared humanity and that shared reproductive health. I know I sort of pivoted off onto politics, but I like to. But we're real and Spring Fertility is real. And frankly, I”m disgusted with our current administration, and as a CEO of a company or as a founder of a company, I probably shouldn't say that, but I don't care because it's reproductive health, right? And that's what we're passionate about! So we're passionate about helping improve the lives of women, both in our own community and if we can tie those lives to women who are deserving and caring and underserved, we want to. And so that's what we do with every pregnancy we actually support access to skilled obstetric and antenatal care in western and central Uganda.
JONES 41:17
How do you want to conclude with our audience of how Spring Fertility is going to build this new standard of care that's not seen anywhere?
KLATSKY 41:27
I hope that we continue to have great feedback from our patients. I learned that not every single patient is going to have a perfect experience, but our commitment is when we have a patient who had an experience that didn't live up to our goals, that we listen and react immediately and try to improve our system. Right now, I think we deliver amazing care and I hope that we can continue to hear the kind of feedback from patients that they have pregnancies quicker, the experience is less uncomfortable and more empowering, and if we can continue to do that and continue to empower our patients, provide a more comfortable, compassionate and efficient experience--those are words that don't always go together--that Spring will continue to grow. It will continue to grow in the Bay Area and as well as new geographies! And anybody who's interested in that mission, should give me a call or send me an email because we are hiring.
JONES 42:29
New geographies, watch out folks! They’re coming to your town! Dr. Peter Klatsky. Thank you very much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health.
KLATSKY 42:37
Thank you, Griff, thank you.
You’ve been listening to the Inside Reproductive Health Podcast with Griffin Jones. If you're ready to take action to make sure that your practice drives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society, visit fertiltybridge.com to begin the first piece of the Fertility Marketing System, the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic. Thank you for listening to Inside Reproductive Health.