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130: Does First Class Service Win in the End? with Terry Malanda

On this episode of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones chats with Terry Malanda about patients’ freedom of choice. Terry, the owner of Mandell’s Clinical Pharmacy, believes that customer service is the North Star for long-term company growth. With all the consolidation happening, Griffin and Terry explore the current state of how consumers make their pharmacy decision and future trends on what will impact that decision.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

The debate on freedom of choice for patients to choose a pharmacy Why pharmacies can and should be providing additional services to patients, including benefits coverage and discount programs How consolidation of fertility clinics is reducing the choice that patients have when it comes to pharmacies and other services Why some pharmacies outsource their compounding, and what that means The virtuous cycle vs. the vicious cycle of customer service

Terry’s Info:
Website: https://www.mymandellspharmacy.com/meet-the-staff/

Twitter: ​​https://twitter.com/mandellsrx

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-malanda-09ab9528/



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Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.


[00:00:51] Griffin Jones: Freedom to choose in Inside Reproductive Health. I like stirring the pot, but that one we'll save for another day, but you're probably already writing to Engage MD to cancel my sponsorship depending on wherever you're coming from in this sphere, Terry Malanda's probably like what the heck?  Griffin had to introduce her podcast episode like that?

I did. I couldn't resist. We're talking about the freedom of choice for patients to choose what pharmacy they want to use among other things. We're talking about the freedom of choice for patients to choose what they want to choose and what that's like in the fertility space, with all the consolidation happening, reducing that choice that patients have when it comes to pharmacies and other services.

Pharmacies can and should be providing additional services to patients. At least according to my guests, including finding out benefits, coverage, and finding out discount programs, some pharmacies outsource their compounding. And we talk about the implications for that. And we talk about the virtuous cycle versus the vicious cycle of customer service.

My guest for today is Terry Melanda, co-owner of Mandell's Pharmacy. And we talk about all of this and more from a woman in business who has been here before. We've seen a lot of women as principals of their companies, and I was very happy to have her on the show, and I hope you get something out of the conversation.

And I look forward to your feedback. I know you'll give it to me, whether I want to hear it or not. Enjoy this episode of Inside Reproductive Health with Terry Malanda. Mrs. Malanda, Terry, welcome to Inside Reproductive Health. 

[00:02:37] Terry Malanda: Thank you, Griffin. It's my pleasure to be here. It's great to see you. 

[00:02:40] Griffin Jones: It's about time to have you on because you know that you're a good speaker and if people know you, they know that sometimes you're a little shy about, but I just thought of a couple years ago, Mandell’s sponsored a virtual event that we did.

It was a patient facing event. It was a virtual fertility conference. This was actually pre-COVID and, and, and you recorded your presentation, and my employees were like, she's so good. And I was like, she is so good. Somebody needs to tell her that. 

[00:03:08] Terry Malanda: Well, well thank you. I appreciate the compliment.

I know I spoke at a public event, and I remember I brought a speech that I have prewritten, and then once I was there I just after hearing stories and patient stories, I just ripped up my speech and, and I winged it. So, thank you. I appreciate that compliment. 

[00:03:25] Griffin Jones: Sometimes it's just like, you know, it's like having the seatbelt there, even though you're not gonna need it.

Right. And then you end up having a good conversation or a good talk or in the case of when I do, presentation, as soon as I see somebody's eyes, then I can go into a different headspace. And I become a better talker. At least I do from my vantage point who, who knows if the audience agrees or not.

[00:03:48] Terry Malanda: I think it's from the heart. I think when you speak from the heart, it's, it's a lot more genuine and I think that's what you do on your podcast. That's why we enjoy listening to them. 

[00:03:56] Griffin Jones: Well, and that's why I wanted to have, when I wanted to just get kind of a State of the Union of what's going on in pharmacy, that you were the person that I thought of just to, to speak of, of what's going on.

We haven't had too many discussions on this show about pharmacy, and, because partly, Terry, because I don't know what the doctors, like, really should know and, and versus like, what's what, what might just be boring or incidental information to them. So can you kind of just give us like if you, we were at PCRS and a doctor was sitting down with you, and just said, like, Terry, like what's going on across the pharmacy field right now? How would you start with a really open-ended question like that?

[00:04:40] Terry Malanda: I think I would probably first back up a little bit and let them know how important it is to choose the right pharmacy, or for the patient to choose the right pharmacy. We're only a small part of the infertility picture. Obviously,  the doctors have a lot more interaction than the nurses and, and a lot more to say and, and decide, but dealing with at the right pharmacy who truly understands what the patient is going through understands the role of a pharmacy, and how to best help a patient navigate through that portion of the journey, I think is really important.

So I think I'll probably stop start there. Then if you're asking about current events, I'd probably address the fact that there is so much consolidation happening and how it's changing it. Pharmacy's always changing. Always. The landscape is always changing, but right now there is a lot of consolidation.

There are a lot of companies that are buying out pharmacies and creating different models. Not that they're better or worse, they're just different. And I probably, you know, have a good discussion about that with a doctor, but I think the important thing when choosing a pharmacy is to make sure that the staff is very dedicated, that they're passionate about what they do.

And that the patient is gonna be in really good hands, pay a really good price, and have the support necessary, both educationally and frankly, emotionally from a pharmacy. That's gonna understand that. I always say that we and my family, we went through two things. We went through cancer. 

Thank God my husband survived the bone marrow transplant in 2005, but we went through infertility in the 1990s, and they are both catastrophic illnesses. And, I think that no one who hasn't experienced it and dealt with it for a while, really understands just how disruptive infertility is in the life of the patient and, and the couple and the relationship and the finances.

And I believe that having a pharmacy who even just understands all of that is very important. And in order to do that, it can't, it has to come from the top and you have to have training the, the appropriate training and, you know, it has to come from the heart. I just believe that everything has to come from the heart and you're dealing with real people with real situations and a couple who are really struggling often just to get through this, and sometimes repeat treatments, et cetera. So, to go back to a pharmacy, I think it's just important for doctors to really know their pharmacy, understand what a pharmacy is, and how much a pharmacy can do for them. Our tagline is sort of, we make it easy for you, so we try to help as much as we can the clinic and the patient.

So it's really teamwork that happens when a patient uses us. So I don't know that all doctors know that I think that many do and many appreciate it, but I'm not sure that all of 'em understand it. 

[00:07:26] Griffin Jones: Well, maybe we take the angle down. What can a pharmacy do for them? Because if I'm playing devil's advocate, Terry and I'm the CEO of a, a, a large network that has just consolidated a number of clinics, or even if I'm not, even if I own a practice and I'm the single provider and I'm thinking, well, like, choosing the right pharmacy's, like, yeah, I understand that some people may have more heart than others and, and some people might be able to do a little bit customer service, but at the end of the day, it's, it's the drug- getting the drugs to the people. And I wanna just get it to them for as cheap as possible, because the drug companies’ charging them a lot.

I'm charging them a fair amount, and I wanna just get them as cheap as possible. And so I'm gonna refer to whoever and, or they can choose whatever pharmacy they want or, or will use one that this private equity group has told us is gonna be cheaper across the scale, whatever it is. So you know, I'm coming with a commodity. 

What is it that the pharmacies could actually be doing for them?. 

[00:08:26] Terry Malanda: Well, I'll tell you what we do. And I know that we actually do the things that we say we do. For example, as soon as the patient starts out with us, we give 'em a full education on what to expect next. We also always, if the patient has any medications in their order, that qualify for discount programs, we encourage them to, we tell them we educate them on the discount programs and encourage them to apply because you never know the discount programs we happen to be, if we're always the number one pharmacy. For the discount program that our company runs with Toronto with compassionate care. I think there's been a consolidation of several pharmacies, and now we're kind of neck to neck, but I know that that is a result of all the education that we give patients.

We apply coupons. We're always looking out for the best price. We always offer the best price. And when we offer a price, we don't increase one thing to decrease the other. We have never done that. We're very proud of the fact that we're very transparent. With our pricing and kind of stay away from what I call gimmick.

Because I think the fertility patient has plenty to deal with and to have to try and figure out the very complex world of pharmacy pricing. We assist the nurses tremendously. So the other thing we say to clinics is with us, let's fax it and forget it. So whether the prescription comes in electronically or via fax, we are gonna handle it from there.

We do absolutely everything from A to Z. And if the patient, for example, in the insurance company, if it's mandatory, a situation where the patient has to use their own pharmacy that is with their insurance company. And we determined that the coverage is there. We handle the entire transaction and we notify the clinic. So, this way the patient always knows what's going on and the clinic always knows what's going on. We also try to work and really customize services for the clinic. So if you're a new clinic with our facility, we would ask things like, how do you prefer to be contacted?

You prefer email. Do you prefer to leave a phone call, get the right contact people. And we really do a lot of work up front to make sure that we're maximizing their time, not interrupting as much as we can and making it easier for the staff at the doctor's office. ‘Cause nurses work very hard, and doctor’s time is very limited.

We are fully aware of that. So we have an entire prior authorization department. We make sure the patients get their orders. And if the patient, if there's some sort of a delay, we make sure that we're contacting the doctor's office and contacting the patient and they, and trying to figure out a dose for that day.

And we're very highly successful at that. That usually happens like if in a very bad storm, I mean, I'm sure every office knows that sometimes when the weather gets in the way you, you're not able the patient is not able to get it, but we also, that's another thing we do. We watch the weather across the country.

And so when we see bad weather coming, we anticipate that we have a way to contact all the patients and get their order out either before the storm or after. So we do a lot of behind the scenes work and that takes a lot of service. It takes a lot of employees and, quite frankly, it's expensive.

But as far as providing those services. If you compare our pricing to other pharmacies who may not provide exactly the same degree of service, we're usually, if we don't beat 'em, we're right in that ballpark. So, I just believe that service matters to a patient. I was a patient, my husband and I got into infertility because we couldn't conceive, we had trouble.

I was 28 when I started trying, and I got pregnant when I was 34. So you know, it was, I dealt, we didn't do infertility back then. And I dealt with a different pharmacy, and I just was not very happy with the level of service, being a pharmacist, myself. I knew what you can do for patients. And so we just decided to specialize in infertility.

I mean, we were very lucky. We did a frozen embryo and that worked, and then our, daughters, they're 20 months apart. And she came without any help, which is amazing. So we have two miracle children who are grown now. And we absolutely are passionate, and we love doing what we do, and we love the feedback we get as far as how much we help the patient, and frankly how much we help the clinics.

And I'd love for you to interview some of the doctors that use us and, and ask them that question, because I'm pretty sure that they would vouch for everything I'm saying. 

[00:12:43] Griffin Jones: Well, I know that if I interviewed different pharmacy owners, though, that they would say the same thing. So give me a couple of tangible examples of what practice owners should be looking out for, like, the level, like the specific service that makes a difference either in the care that the patient is receiving, or that is reducing staff burden. Because I don't know if Duane Read is still in business, but if they are, and I'm the CEO, let's pretend they are.

And I'm the CEO of Duane Read, and decide, we're gonna launch a specialty pharmacy infertility that my executives are saying the same thing. And I'm saying the same thing about the quality of service. And we got the best quality of service. And so what are the actual, like, what are as tangible as you can get?

What are those things that, that make the difference for patients and staff?

[00:13:34] Terry Malanda: Well, to be honest, any pharmacy, and I said this to doctors when I visit them and I'm trying to get them to prefer patients, any pharmacy. You're absolutely right at the beginning, you, you have a box of medication, you put a label on it and you, and you either ship it or get it ready for the patient’s pick up.

Right. Apparently, on the outside, pharmacy should be very simple, but it's all of the services that I've detailed. And it's not just saying that you do it, but actually performing the service and actually getting involved in solving the problems and the issues and the little idiosyncrasies that come along with, if the patients enduring their cycle.

For example, one of the things that we do that I'm, I don't know, you know, I'm sure maybe other people do, but I don't know. We take a complete history and we actually preface that to patients by saying that this is the only thing that we're filling for you. So we need to take, we're gonna ask more questions than your typical neighborhood pharmacy, because typically when you go to a neighborhood pharmacy, They wanna know your name, your address, your allergies.What's required by the board. 

We go a lot further than that. We take a complete history of medications that they're on, and we also take a complete medical history. And we had had patients who have had conditions where they really shouldn't get a cycle, and, but they forgot to tell their doctor. And we have one particular patient, this was probably the best story we've had about six or seven, but, well, the best one was, we had a patient who had, had an estrogen-independent cancer. And when the pharmacist reviewed her initial information, she reached out to the patient and said, did you discuss this with the doctor? And she said, well, if she wasn't sure if she had discussed it, she had, if she had been specific about the type of cancer she had, so she actually had to call her clinic back.

It was, it was a long issue. So what ended up happening is about a year and a half later, she called and spoke to one of our pharmacists, the one who had called her, and she called and said to, she called, thanking her for saving her life, because what happened was she delayed treatment while she was getting all of her treatment.

And her cancer came back without having started any treatment. So she had a three year old who was a naturally conceived child. And she said to our pharmacist that she shudders to think that, had she started treatment, she would've thought it was a treatment that caused her cancer to come back.

So we got involved in a clinical pharmacy. We do get involved on a clinical level as it pertains to medications. And also as it pertains to medical conditions And I think really a better answer to your question is that, you know, this, I hope this doesn't sound selfish, but it's what we hear from clinics.

A lot of people say they're gonna do what, what certain services, but then it isn't provided. For example, there are patients who have coverage. We call it hidden coverage because there are some medications that are not specific to IVF, and we can run those through insurance, and we'll take the extra step of doing a prior authorization with the assistance of the physician's office.

And oftentimes that can save patients hundreds of dollars, but typically what we hear, and the reason we get referrals, is that sometimes those patients, if there's no infertility coverage, they're just cashed out. The benefit is not investigated. We have a team of four people who do just investigations for insurance.

So, I think it's a matter of providing the service that you say that you're going to provide. And our staff does that, and they do it really well. So, I'm very proud of our staff. Honestly, the training comes from the top, but it's there carrying out of providing the services that constantly give us great reviews.

And, and I think it's important for the doctor's office to be proud to recommend the pharmacy. And it's a reflection on them. So, we put a great deal of pride and dedication into our work, because we know that, at the end of the day, we're representing them as well. If we, you know, we're representing the judgment of that doctor's office.

And we take that extremely seriously. 

[00:17:38] Griffin Jones: So, that you're, you're kind of getting to my next question, which is, is it enough for the doctors to care? Because I believe that the patients care because they say they do, there's yours, and a handful of others, that have really good reviews.

And you can, you can see what patients are saying, the reason why, part of the reason why you're on this show and, and I would allow a couple other people in your space to, to be in your seat right now- but not everybody- but, and part of the reason why it's you is not just because I know I've known you and Eddie for years, and I know that you're awesome.

People, I've never been a patient. So I don't know about that, but I do know how to read what patients are saying. It's overwhelmingly positive. And so I believe that, okay, it's enough for patients to care, is all of that enough for physicians to care, Terry? 

[00:18:26] Terry Malanda: Absolutely. Because I think that. Doctors truly care about their patients.

I don't know if they understand just how important it is to recommend a good pharmacy, but I do believe that doctors wanna do the best for their patients. I mean, I come from a family, I'm the black sheep. I'm the pharmacist, you know, half my family are all doctors and I, I see it for myself. I mean, I can tell you my sister's a gastroenterologist.

I can't tell you how many times over my lifetime that she's, being a doctor, we've been at Thanksgiving dinner, and she gets a call. She has to leave and go to the hospital cause someone is bleeding and you know, it's not, I'll be there in an hour. It's medicine. It is an extremely dedicated career. I mean, I don't know if the general public truly has an appreciation of just how hard people have to work to become a doctor, how hard they have to study. And I do believe that doctors care very, very deeply about their patients. I just, I don't know that. And, and I believe that many of them do completely understand the difference that the right pharmacy can make. However, I just don't know if all doctors know that.

So I appreciate the opportunity, obviously, to speak to you, because you're asking really great questions. And if a doctor recommends a pharmacy and the assumption by the patient is that they're gonna be well-treated and well taken care of, and that they're not gonna run into a gimmick, or they're call is not gonna be unanswered, et cetera.

So we think about it. This is getting your medications, is, like, is like the -what do you call the pre- what do you call, like a movie?

[00:20:03] Griffin Jones: The trailer? It's the trailer to the movie. 

[00:20:05] Terry Malanda: Getting medication is almost like a trailer to what's about to happen, because a lot of times, you're preparing sort of, but getting your medication, that experience is almost a trailer of things to come.

And one of the things that we also focus on is the psychological aspect of pharmacy. So we try to soften the blow and we educate our patients. You're gonna get a box, it's got a lot of things in it. However, you're not alone, you're gonna use one thing at the same time. I'm sorry. One thing at a time, you're going to be guided by your nurse.

Any questions you can call the pharmacy and that, that sticker shock of, of just opening up a box and seeing a whole bunch of needles is quite scary. And we started to do something about that when Eddie, my husband who's really in-tune with so many things, it's unbelievable. He was looking on YouTube and he started to, he found videos of people opening their boxes and looking at everything that was in it, and the look of shock and horror on their face, and years ago, we started to do that where we, we prepared the patient for the opening of the box there, they can call the pharmacy, and we can go over all their medication with them.

That's offered. And we also include things in the package to, to just so the first thing they see is beautiful and inspirational. And I, and, and we, our objective is to make people smile a little bit and look forward to the treatment as a positive thing. Not ever give false hope, because I don't think anyone in this field ever does that, but certainly just start this journey, best foot forward, and do everything that you can do in your power to increase your success. And by that, I mean we try to prepare people to be prepared, to be a good patient, a compliant patient. Because I know that, years ago, we used to get a lot of patients who would call and say, I forgot what dose my nurse told me to get tonight. Now, a lot of things are electronic now, so that has reduced, but years ago, when everything was just paper and you got a phone call before three o'clock, or before four o'clock, people would forget to write them down.

And we started preparing people for that. This is what you can expect when your nurse calls. Have pen and paper ready, write it down so you don't forget. Look ahead. The next few days, look at your medications and anticipate your needs, make sure that you have what you have, a huge one is to have the trigger, the trigger shot.

In my opinion, my humble opinion, is the most important injection in the whole, in the whole course of treatments, because anything else, if a patient makes an error and under-doses or overdoses, you could probably the, the reproductive endocrinologist can fix the problem. You, either, you can work with that.

You do bloodwork and you can work to correct that error. But if you don't have your trigger shot, when at the moment and time that the doctor needs you to inject, that's a big problem. So that's another thing we honestly, we don't have that problem because we educate people to, even if you're paying cash, your trigger shot is your insurance policy that you did not just throw away the last 10 days of your life- treatment.

And we educate patients on that. And we do it in a way where they understand what the importance of it is, and they always purchase their trigger shot along with their medication. Because it's that important. And it's knowing all the nuances of infertility and the things that can happen, or the things that you can prevent, and the amount of education that we try to instill in our patients and in writing, and also verbally that matter.

[00:23:30] Griffin Jones: So, now physicians are trying to think, okay, there's, there's a difference between pharmacies. I guess I've been hearing this from my nurses, or from my staff, and, okay, I'm starting to see that. Maybe it isn't just ‘send this piece of paper out, have the meds come back’ and that there's more to it.

You talked about consolidation and some things being different because of consolidation on the clinic side, it makes me think of something my dad says “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. And sometimes I think like, oh, that's just a ridiculous saying that my dad says, but I can kind of see what that means when I'm thinking of clinics, like, more things change, the more they stay the same.

So what is in the last couple years, just at a high level, what's different in the pharmacy world, and what's the same with consolidation happening. 

[00:24:15] Terry Malanda: I think the only big difference I see as a pharmacy and consolidation is when clinics will lock in with just one pharmacy or two pharmacies.

And I think that that's kind of the insurance model, and anyone who's ever had to use mandatory insurance, it works great for many people, but then there be, you know, we're in America, we should have competition. It's not a one size fits all. And what I like to see is, you know, obviously we never go, shouldn't say never, but it's difficult to go back to the old days.

But I think patients should have the freedom of choice to compare and go to whatever pharmacy they choose. And a lot of times just by calling around for a price call they get a feel for who they wanna deal with. And I think that's, that's, one of the things that has changed in the pharmacy world a lot is the consolidation and then picking one, you know, one horse in the race.

Well, what if the patient doesn't have a good experience? How does that reflect on the, on the, clinic? So, I would, I always say, I'll compete with anybody. I'll put up my staff against any staff. And I would like to see an open market of just having a variety of pharmacies to choose from, and let us all compete.

But when, when people compete, the consumers win, and that's always been the case. I honestly, I don't think I can think of anywhere where, any instance where that's not the case. And as far as you probably shop a lot. So some people like Macy's more, some people like TJ Maxx, some people like Bloomingdale’s, and sometimes you need to go to different places to find out what you like best, but having the freedom to experience.

[00:25:59] Griffin Jones: I'm all Barney’s all the way, Terry.

[00:26:01] Terry Malanda: Are you? 

[00:26:03] Griffin Jones: No, not quite, but I like fooling people sometimes. 

[00:26:07] Terry Malanda: Well, I just took my son to buy some suits, I should have spoken to you, ‘cause I haven't had to buy a suit for my son in years, but he's in law school, so he needs suits now. So yeah, it's, I think that there's been a very big change in the consolidation now.

The interesting thing is going to be, to figure out what wins in the end. I'm gonna, I'm betting my horse on, I'm betting on the horse of service. I'm betting on service. I think that at the end of the day, patients are gonna want to be treated really well during such an emotional time, during a difficult time.

I mean, women are so strong. They really are. It's unbelievable to me that, I mean, I was a patient myself, and I was proud of the way I handled it. We're jacked up on hormones during this, and to be able to go through your everyday life and keep your calm, and be kind to others while you're jacked up on hormones, is not easy at all.

But I think that we're so focused on the goal of getting pregnant, that whatever they tell us to do, we're going to do it. And it takes a large amount of strength to be able to, you know, go through this treatment. And then, as a couple, I know that it puts a lot of stress on a marriage, or on a relationship, because it's all-consuming when you're going through it.

I think a lot of women have the same experience I did when I was trying to get pregnant, and it took us four-and-a half-years to get pregnant. When I was trying to get pregnant,  all I would see, wherever I went was pregnant women and babies. That's all I saw. It's kind of like, I always compare it to when you're about to buy a car, and if you're gonna buy a car and you decide that you want, I don't know, like blue Volkswagen, right.

And you, you're on, you're on the highway, that's all you see or you see, you know, that you're so hyper-focused on one thing, and what your chore is of finding one that that's what happened to me, at least. And I know I've, I've spoken to, I couldn't count how many women I've spoken to going through this, and they have the same experience when you first start out.

It's not as grueling, but once you’ve had a few, if you are lucky enough to get pregnant right away, that's fantastic. But if you've had more than one failure, it begins to really dawn on you this may not happen and I know that would. 

[00:28:25] Griffin Jones: And we're definitely starting to see, see this, this ability to choose service go away and that people might want.

So, because I'm going through all of this, I wanna be able to choose someone that's really easy to work with. That really adds value to the education that I need going through this. But I can't choose because this is the pharmacy that I have to use. And I'm thinking a lot of doctors are probably listening and saying, that's not my fault, Terry.

 I would, you know, I refer to a number of different pharmacies, but if they use this insurance company or if they use this employer benefits broker you know, unless there's a shortage somewhere else, whatever it might be, they have to use this pharmacy so where is like the strain on choice starting to come from?

Is it coming more from, from clinics being consolidated or is it more from a decrease in cash pay in the marketplace? 

[00:29:13] Terry Malanda: It's definitely coming more from the consolidation, from what we've seen now. There are also plans, as you mentioned, that are selecting just one or two pharmacies to deal within a network.

And I mean, we're in talks with all those companies. And I really feel like eventually will be allowed in because, as they grow, they'll have more needs for more pharmacies, and more, you know, treat more people and service more people. But I see it a lot in the patients who are still paying out of pocket, and they're being referred to a pharmacy now.

We don't have any exclusive deals at all. I can tell you that any office that recommends us recommends us because they like to work with us. But, we don't have any exclusive deals with anyone. I've never even asked for one. Maybe I should, maybe I should start asking for exclusive deals because our service isn't gonna go down.

But, we definitely have gained the trust over the years. I've been in infertility for about 28 years now, strictly pretty much all infertility. We started doing strictly infertility. About 20 years ago, we do nothing else. That's all we do, even our compounding services, all we do is compound sterile and non sterile for fertility patients.

We've actually turned down hormone replacement requests. And not that there's anything wrong with hormone replacement, but we wanna keep our focus on the fertility patient. And the more you order things down, the more difficult it is to offer the kind of service that we do. 

[00:30:38] Griffin Jones: I wanna talk about that compounding, but you kind of like you, well, you tickled something in my brain that, I mean, you said you haven't approached anybody about it, exclusive deal.

And I'm thinking, well, why not? Like what there's, you know, six big networks. And then, you know, if you broke them up into a couple groups, there's a few, like really large groups in the country. And then you add Canada and there's one or two more in there. And, and so I think like, well, why not?

Why not broker a deal with one of them or approach one of them, you have the services look at how we can make this part of your end to end excellent patient care. Why have you not gone that route yet? 

[00:31:17] Terry Malanda: Oh, like I said, I might have to start because sometimes, if you can't beat 'em, you have to join them.

Right. But you've known me for a long time, I think for years. And Eddie and I have beliefs and we truly try to run our business with those beliefs. And, one of those beliefs is that we truly believe that the patients should have recommendations and then go find the better one or what they, where they feel more comfortable.

And to be honest, we have grown consistently year after year after. And it hasn't been by forcing anyone. Do we make every patient a hundred percent happy all the time? No, but I would say we're 99.99999%. No, no kidding. No exaggeration. And we're very proud of the fact that we've grown organically.

We've grown through recommendations and from good service providing the best service. If the market continues to change to a point where we're gonna have to, you know, bid to be the only pharmacy, we might have to do that. But so far we have not approached any company. We have gone to every company and been allowed to be one of the choices in the network.

And that's what we're working on. We wanna be one of the choices once. We're one of the choices in the network. We want patients to pick us. We don't, it's hard. I don't even know how they do it. It must be hard if you're forced to use one doctor or one pharmacy, or, you know, to be forced to do anything is not something that.

I would prefer to be a part of, so I'll leave that door open because obviously the market keeps changing to a point where we start to not grow organically. Then we may have to change our business model, but I'd rather stay the course and hopefully make others understand that people need to have freedom of where they go for their medical services, whether it be pharmacy or a physician or anything else, I'd much rather.

Stay the course. And I'm not gonna, we're not gonna change the world, but IVF is not that big of a market. So I kind of hope to stick to our guns for as long as we possibly can. And try to affect the positive change. That's gonna be positive for the patients and positive for the clinics to be able to, we have doctors, we have doctors who used this for years and now their clinic has consolidated and they can no longer send to us.

They're not happy about that. You know, so I'm proud of the fact that they're not happy about that. I'd love to have their referrals back, but the market is small enough, yet big enough, where we can make up the difference for any losses. And like I said, we've grown year after year and it's all been organically.

We're gonna try to keep that up for as long as we can. And we listen, if we get, if we do get a negative review, We definitely act upon that. We find out what happened. We investigate. And sometimes the negative review is, you know, 

[00:34:10] Griffin Jones: Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. And sometimes, sometimes there is like what I'd say, and, and for the doctors listening, because they especially get sensitive to negative reviews.

[00:34:20] Terry's talking about the importance of the trigger shot here, and how that is like an insurance program for patients in and of itself. It's so tied into the outcomes of success. It's so tied into what they've invested already, and these are the things that Engaged MD helps with. Engaged MD's model helps with pretreatment education so that your patients know this stuff cold. It's not: they have to cram it all in the office, and they're like a deer in headlights. They're consuming this information at their leisure. They can do it on repeat and they get true informed consent along the way they check in with the module, making sure that they understand.

So by the time that you are talking to them or that your care team is talking to them, you are answering the questions that are really specific to them, making sure that they're able to comply with the protocol the whole way through Engaged MD helps with this because there's otherwise too much at stake for your patients.

And it's costing your staff too much to have to go through it over and over again. When Engaged MD provides true informed consent and pre-treatment education go to engaged md.com/irh. You'll get 25% off your implementation fee. If you mentioned that you heard it on Inside Reproductive Health, or that you heard it from Griffin Jones, go to engagemd.com/irh.

So you can put your patients and staff in a much better position and have much better educated patients so that they don't lose out on things that they could have known. Had they received the information at the right time, in the right way, engagedmd.com/irh.

 [00:36:03] Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. And sometimes, sometimes there is like what I'd say, and, and for the doctors listening, because they especially get sensitive to negative reviews.

It's, you're looking for the patterns over time and it takes a really thick skin. But it's the right balance of, of humility, but not kowtowing to what everybody says. It's, you have to have the thick enough skin to be able to take in all of the feedback, knowing that not all of it is valuable or true or PC to, to distill down to the patterns, what are true.

And it's hard to do. And so I'd say like, if you, you know, one negative view, don't sweat on it, but when you do have when, and, but that's the benefit of quantity in feedback that if you do have thousands of customers and you can get hundreds of responses and, you know, two dozen aren't the best.

Well, then you look for the patterns between those two dozen, and, and so that's something that you do if you've given us a snapshot of, kind of the trend that's happening with consolidation. What about with compounding? How is this all affecting the way pharmacies compound or is it?

[00:37:18] Terry Malanda: Oh absolutely. Let me just go back to the review thing for a second. Sometimes our negative review is when a patient wants something that's simply illegal to do and, and we can't do it. So once in a while we, we sell drugs, right. So we cannot just say yes to everything, but we once in a while, someone is unhappy about some and we definitely start, you know, look into that.

[00:37:38] Griffin Jones: Oh, that's just a little, not, not from Mandell’s, that's coming right from Grif for all the enterprising street drug dealers out there. There you go. There's a lead gen source for you. You just go to the negative reviews of pharmacies when they're complaining about something that the pharmacy can't sell them to you.

There's your market. Just kidding. Legal disclaimer. Just kidding. Okay. 

[00:37:58] Terry Malanda: Disclaimer. 

I get it though you asked me about compounding, how that's changed. I'll go back a little bit historically, most pharmaceutical companies, if not every single pharmaceutical company that has ever existed, they started out as compounders.

If you ever saw the movie, It's A Wonderful Life. And you remember the scene with the pharmacist, you know, the scene right? Where he?

[00:38:19] Griffin Jones: Mr. Goer, I was trying to think of the pharmacist name. The pharmacist's name is Mr. Goer. 

[00:38:24] Terry Malanda: Thank you. I should know that, but I don't. But George realized that he had put a poison in the capsules.

And so you remember that scene, that's how all pharmacies started out compounders. So compounding is an ancient art, as long as medications have been made or are tried. And there was a time when there were no pharmaceutical companies, then some of them had formulas. Some compounders had formulas that they found to be very effective and would be very popular.

And so they started to market the mass market and that was the birth of pharmaceutical companies. So. Compounding fits special needs for people. Not all of the compounds that are made in for the treatment of infertility are of it. None of 'em are available in the market on the market. So sometimes there are certain doctors who have protocols that require us to make special products that are going to help the patient get pregnant, create the right environment for the uterus and for, you know, increase the efficacy of the other medications and allow the patient to get pregnant.

How that's changed is that years ago, I'm gonna say this is about eight or 10 years ago. A lot of changes happened. There was a huge tragedy that happened in New England and that kind of woke everyone up as far as government agencies. And so the government started to change a lot of the rules and regulations and got much stricter.

With compounding practices and put in a lot of new and not easy to achieve regulations on books that combat pounding pharmacies have to follow. So a lot of people ran away from that. We built a bigger lab. That was our response was let's build a bigger lab, USP800, USP797, USP795 compliance and get several pharmacists certified to do sterile compounding.

I think that a lot of, I don't think I know that a lot of the pharmacies are outsourcing compounds and not necessarily a bad idea to do that, except that some patients. Don't like that because they have to now rely on two pharmacies to get what they need. And sometimes it's more than that.

Sometimes there are products that maybe a pharmacy doesn't sell. And so they have, they end up using two to three pharmacies. And what that's one of the reasons that some of the nurses, some of clinics are happy that we, we have everything that they need. Like, whatever it is that you need, we're gonna be able to make it, whether it's compound or any other medication.

We have everything that the patient is going to need to cycle. And you don't have to worry about. Tracking to see if a pharmacy sent it and then the pharmacy be sent it that they both get there at the same time and is every ready for the patient to start. So that's how it's changed compounding for us.

It's actually been a bit, a huge benefit for us to be able to compound. 

[00:41:12] Griffin Jones: This might be my ignorance. Hopefully somebody else is wondering it so that I seem less dumb. But you mentioned in the Mr. Goer era. So back then, he probably would've been, not even called a pharmacist, right? Probably would've been called a druggist back in those days.

A druggist and you said from the druggist was born the pharmacist and born the pharmaceutical manufacturers making do actually making the drug. So why did compounding stay on the pharmacy stream and not become the responsibility or the role of the pharmaceutical manufacturer?

So I wouldn't you know, if we're lacking compounds, then why doesn't the doctor called the drug maker and say, this is what needs to be made?

[00:41:54] Terry Malanda: Because there are so many, for example, I'll just say market dose Lupron, I'll use a really good example for this and thank you. That's a great question by the way.

Cause it begs the question of why aren't manufacturers making it so micro-dose, leuprolide the typical three strengths that we make it in, which are the most popular 40 per 0.2 50 per 0.2 and 40 per 0.1. So it's 40 micrograms of lide in 0.1 or 0.2, right? However, there are different doctors through the country that they want 10 micrograms or they want 20 micrograms so there are variations. So anyone can make that, but in the world of compounding, when you make a sterile compound, you can only assign it. And I won't get too technical, but it either nine days or 14 days, depending on the circumstances under which they were made. And by that, I mean, for example, if I'm making a compound, the first two needle punctures, make it a 14 day compound.

If I have to put a third needle in the valve that that becomes a nine day compound. So with the variety of different strengths it difficult for a pharmaceutical company to make one or two strengths in enough quantities to make it profitable for them basically. So it's a very small part of a very large selection of medications that are used in fertility. And then for example, in progesterone when we give dating to compounds for example, our pharmacy, we had to do studies on the three main strengths that we picked. We did studies, their extensive studies are very expensive to do and very detailed.

And then if you can prove to the FDA that your compound is good in that container for that amount of time and that it's a sterile product and this really holds until your expiration that you can give it dating. So work with the dating. We have some studies that show things are good for six months, but we only give it four months or three months just because we wanna be conservative with our dating.

 For example, another reason to, with compounds that one of the biggest things that we compound is progesterone and oil, and that is commercially available. It's available in Sesame oil and it's fairly inexpensive, so it works great, but it's a small cross sensitivity, but there is a cross sensitivity between Sesame, which is a tree nut and any other nuts.

So peanuts, cashew, anything. So any patient who has any kind of an allergyto a nut, you don't wanna risk using Sesame oil, maybe nothing happens, but there's like a 5% chance that you could have a reaction. And obviously in someone who's trying to achieve a pregnancy, you don't wanna have this complicated by some sort of severe allergic reaction.

So there are doctors that use strictly But there's one or two or three clinics in the country that I know of that strictly use the compounded formula because there's so many people now with allergies and nut allergies, and sometimes they don't even know they have it. So they prefer to use something that isn't gonna give 'em welts or swelling and itching, et cetera, because the, the reactions can be mild or they can be severe.

It typically they're mild, but if the patient gets pregnant and has to stay on progesterone for six weeks, it's pretty hard to inject six weeks into an area that's very sensitive and swollen and itchy it's torture. So the, a doctors who opt for that if they see that the patient's having a reaction to Sesame.

[00:45:16] Griffin Jones: So you can have challenges with compounding things like PIO or in general, it's certainly an inconvenience to the patient. If they have to go to more than one pharmacy for, to get a compounded script. But you said that the other pharmacies will reach out or refer out to other pharmacies or they'll outsource the compounding.

Do they ever outsource to you? 

[00:45:38] Terry Malanda: Well, we get a lot of we do get patients that the prescriptions are transferred to us. And that's, you know, that we do help patients. We're not gonna turn patients out. So we do help patients. That being said, we have to be careful with that because as I said, we really focus on service, Griffin, and we had it happen a few years ago, where all of a sudden when all this happened, They started to refer to us.

And so what happened was we increased our batches that we make, we increased the size, but then along time, the holidays, and so less people cycled, we ended up throwing half the batches away. It was very unpredictable, extremely unpredictable. So we try to focus on servicing the clinics that are using them.

We bundle price and we try to make sure that we don't run out of product that has dating. ‘Cause obviously part of the reason to use our pharmacy is that the inject the medications have dating. They have good dating. So if you get the later week or they get the later month you, you could still use the product.

And ‘cause it was specifically made to be used within a certain amount of time. 

[00:46:44] Griffin Jones: So you may have answered my next question then, which was gonna be, is the market big enough to warrant a compounding only pharmacy that is outsourced by other pharmacies? And so if the trend for other pharmacies is to move away from compounding to outsource more or is there a, is the market big enough for one person or one pharmacy just to say, okay, we're the compounding pharmacy, all of you can outsource your compounding to us, and then we'll do it for you.

 So this is now specialized enough that you don't have to have it in houses, does the market bear that. 

[00:47:17] Terry Malanda: I think it could, but compounding is so highly regulated that I think that it would, if you consolidate that portion of it, I think prices would really skyrocket because testing a batch is very expensive training your pharmacist, it's ongoing training or all the time that's expensive.

So it would be difficult, is it big enough.

I would wanna be that pharmacy put it that way. I think you would have a lot of waste because IVF happens in weight. So we usually try to compound based on sales, which is kind of what you're supposed to do, but when the market slows down, you'd end up throwing a whole lot of product away.

And if, you know, we could take losses that are small, but if you had to take a loss that big, that's a good question. Maybe if you had more dating for more products, there could be a pharmacy that did compounding. We're certainly set up to do that, but like I said, we focus on taking care of mostly our patients and we don't turn patients down, but we do focus on taking care of our patients.

So for example if we're in danger of running out of my 90 day or 60 day compounds, or I may have to make them a 14 day compound, we don't turn 'em away, but they don't get the benefit of having the extra dating. That's kind of the problem that you would run into. But a lot of, I think that's some of the pharmacies that compounding now have dating on progesterone.

Not all, some other pharmacies do have dating on their compounding, but some of the pharmacies that are doing the outsourcing, they don't necessarily have a lot of dating. So that's another factor that you have to consider. I guess that's what we've heard from patients. 

[00:48:57] Griffin Jones: Then what do you see as what's going to change or you think are gonna be the biggest changes in the field in the next five years?

So I, particularly as it relates to the pharmacy space, but the IVF field in general, what are you paying in the next three, five years? 

[00:49:12] Terry Malanda: Definitely consolidation. That's I think that's a big factor that's happening. There's a famous well famous to, I mean, everyone in the audience will know what I'm talking about.

But years ago there was a partnership that was made between a pharmaceutical company and a particular pharmacy and that in the end it didn't work out. So I think that this is going to be for a while and then services are going to change and come back. One thing that I have to mention that I think is a big change and I think a good one.

I love men, no offense to men. Yeah. I have a son. I have a husband. I love men. But it's nice. 

[00:49:47] Griffin Jones: Right?

[00:49:48] Terry Malanda: No, no, it's just nice to see so many women prominent in the field of, in for two have pioneered. A tremendous amount of the research and they've come up with the treatments, et cetera, et cetera. But it's really nice to see that a lot of women are getting really involved in the business and, and coming up with business models and service companies.

Some of them have done very well. Some of them haven't done well, but it's just nice to see that in a field that it's so much dependent on, on the, the person carrying the baby, it's really important to, to see that women are getting into that field. And I kind of like it, I think I'm the only female pharmacy owner, I think, in the country.

I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure, I don't know any other female, there were was one, but she had retired and it just. 

[00:50:36] Griffin Jones: You're ahead of your time. 

[00:50:38] Terry Malanda: Huh? 

[00:50:38] Griffin Jones: You're ahead of your time. I don't think we'll be saying that 20 years from now. I hope we're not. 

[00:50:42] Terry Malanda: No. 

[00:50:43] Griffin Jones: But I don't think we will be. 

[00:50:44] Terry Malanda: Absolutely not. And that's one way where I I'm seeing the market changing a lot.

And it's nice, you know, when men and women can come together and really set a goal and, and really go after it, I think I'm a believer that men and women think differently and that it's a great, it's great. When you put that together, you come up with excellent ideas. Because we believe that different people see the world in a different way, and it's great when you have different and not necessarily just men and women, just different people, putting their heads together and coming up with innovation and coming up with great thoughts.

And you can't put yourself in everyone's shoes, you know, it's you could say it, but it's hard to put yourself in everyone's shoes. And that's one thing I always try to do because I'm, I'm now older. I'm not in the age group of women who are going through infertility. And I always wanna listen to the, to the people who are in that age group.

And that's what we try to do as far, or is like marketing. And how are people thinking about different things, new trends, you know, it's just changing. The popular nation is changing. Our society has changed. And I think it's great to see innovation catching up with those changes and with all those changes and with all that individuality.

And I think that service is key to kind of, to tie it all up and a knot. 

[00:51:57] Griffin Jones: So that I wanna talk about it a little bit. So I'm with you on the first two trends, more consolidation, at least for a while, more females in the executive and founder roles, I see that and so for you, is coming back to service, is it a Renaissance of service?

Is that something that you really believe is going to happen, or is that wishful thinking? Because my answer might have been different than it was eight months ago. I wanna talk about that, but is it for you? Is it something you really believe we're gonna have a Renaissance of service or is it-you hope we'll have a Renaissance of service?

[00:52:26] Terry Malanda: Here's what I believe. When the service aspect goes away, things will fail, and then service will come back because that already happened with the example I mentioned earlier. So I believe that you know, we've always said we never wanna get so big that we lose the personal touch, and we mean that we really do mean that.

And I think that when things get so big and so controlled in a matter of, you know, where profit becomes the number one driving force and that's, that's the force, the service aspect falls apart. So I think it's wishful thinking that will happen. Does that answer your question? 

[00:53:07] Griffin Jones: A little bit, but I'm starting to see more evidence for your hope here in what's happened in the overall economy the last year and a half, since people have like, oh, like I'm not gonna work my restaurant job, or I'm not gonna work this service level job. Or, or even in client services in marketing agencies in 2021, there was a, for 40, the average understaffing of agencies was 40% in 2021. It was we're understaffed for 40% we were. And so was the national average and the quality in terms of like, delivery. We still delivered every, but of, like, just that extra service. Absolutely it's offered for us. And I'm admitting it to everybody here and, but also everywhere Terry, like I ordered a, you know, I ordered like a late night meal a few weeks ago and I ordered it at, at, you know, like 9:30 or something.

And, and then I go at, and I get there at 9:58, they close the tent and they're just closed up. And I'm like, I called ahead. I ordered, we’re closed-up. We're done. Or like, or all of the places that you called to make a reservation. It's just, nobody answers the phone or you make your order online.

And, and they say, okay, we'll deliver it next. You know, we'll deliver it on Tuesday and it's like a week later. And this is just across the board of, oh, really felt service suffer. 

[00:54:25] Terry Malanda: I'm absolutely with you. But I would say this and I'm probably giving away more information than I should, but I would say this, you have to make your employees care about what they're doing.

And you have to, if that your employees don't care, if they don't understand, if they don't get it, that person doesn't belong in your, whether it's a restaurant or it's a clothing store or it's a pharmacy, or it's a doctor's office. I think that if you're not able to inculcate the importance of what your, these patients are in the case of pharmacy, what these patients are undergoing, how important it is to them, how they're, you know, people are taking out loans to pay for this.

They've been saving for years to pay for this. And if you can't get people who have a good enough heart to, to get that, to really understand. That, then, your service will go down. We spend a lot of time doing that. It's the urgency, the importance, the care that they have to have. And I can tell you that we coach our employees.

We will talk to them if they just don't get it, or if they don't answer those, we've had employees, like, leave a five o'clock to five o'clock bell ring, and then there's a message on their machine that they never picked up. But luckily we have other employees who check every phone before they leave. So that's a taught behavior and you have to go through a lot of people before you get the right people.

In the case of restaurants, that's a tough one where him, because you know, that's a tough one, but in our case, I think it's not difficult to have people if you're lucky enough to find people who have a good heart, I don't think it's that difficult for them to understand just how important their position is.

And their role is in this patient's journey and in this patient, having everything that they need. And we really instill a sense of urgency in our staff. So that every patient who needs to be serviced is serviced every day. Have we ever faulted on that? Absolutely, once in a while, a fax doesn't get through or something, you know, technical, it's usually technology actually.

But, and have we had employees who didn't answer an email or did not answer yes, but then they're spoken to it. If they can't correct that behavior. You have to run a tight ship. I would say to answer that question, you have to run a very tight ship and it has to be very personal. 

[00:56:45] Griffin Jones: So you don't think it's as hard as restaurants in that sense, but I think it is Terry.

I think it, and part of the reason why you're feeling a little bit less in that sense is because you're always on top of it. And my hypothesis is that it's either a virtuous cycle or a vicious cycle. And for those that are in the vicious cycle, it takes a lot of discipline to get out.

And the virtuous cycle takes a lot of discipline to stay on it. But whether it's a restaurant or a client services firm or a pharmacy that I bet you, you know, if we were just starting out Terry and like we're recently qualified pharmacies recently qualified business people have good hearts, it would take us a, a, we would have a lot of pain in trying to build that team eventually.

We would do it because of who we are, but that's my point is that it, it is a constant investment to be able to, to do that. And, and now I'm really starting to pay attention to, like, even companies that are known for, renowned for their service are, have suffered. And I've been paying attention, like, who in this unprecedented labor market?

We’ve never seen anything. Like it is still able to offer quality service. Those are the people that I'm really paying attention to. 

[00:57:55] Terry Malanda: Yeah, no, I agree with you and not to change a topic, but COVID has affected this country in so many ways. And as far as the economy, I just don't understand a lot of things. I don't understand how people aren't going to work, but yet a lot of businesses are thriving and it's just, none of it makes sense right now.

So I agree with you. I think that's a little bit of what you're trying to say. Right? Am I wrong? 

[00:58:20] Griffin Jones: Yeah. I think, and then part of it is because it's like, well, I think part of the reason why people are doing well, it's like, yeah, I could go to another place to get that meal, but most people are in the same boat right now.

And so it's like part of the reason why they're doing well is, is just because this is happening to everybody. And so there are so few people that it, that really is reliable service every time right now. 

[00:58:43] Terry Malanda: I think the big differentiator is if you treat your employees, that you give them a job or you give them a career.

So we try really hard to give people careers at Mandell’s, if you can perform, if you're really good, are a great employee, and you can really provide the service that we, we always say our customer service, we want it up here. Everyone who's interviewed here is that. And once they're hired as well, we expect it to stay up there.

And I think that for some people just it's a paycheck and they're gonna go. But I think some people understand that if you're serious about your position there, you're gonna get ahead. You're gonna grow with the company and we have a lot of people who've been there for a very long time.

So you know, I don't know that and all work is honorable and no way do I mean this to be, but if you work at a restaurant, you can work at, at another restaurant, restaurants are driving and they're dying for help. So you could work anywhere you want. So there's a little bit of a power shift, I think as far as employers trying to get people to work for them trying so hard, we went through that.

When COVID hit the whole country shut down, I mean, all, you know infertility shut down all elective services shut down and they were shut down. Luckily things reopened for infertility. But it was terrible because when, when they shut down, I was in Mexico.

When we got the news, we were, we had just gotten on a vacation and we didn't hit outside of the hotel room for four days. And it was terrible. We were gonna have to lay people off and we'd never had to lay anyone off. So we were very careful and really looked at. Didn't try to see who we could keep et cetera, et cetera.

Turns out that outta 23 people, 21 of 'em laid themselves off. They didn't. They said I don't wanna come in. I'm afraid. So I really struggled with that and it turns out they laid themselves off in the end. So there was a lot of fear and there, you know everything has changed so much. There are so many industries now that have found out that they don't really need to have someone in the office.

They don't have to pay a lot of office rent, especially in big cities, like New York city, et cetera. So I know I'm totally off topic, but it's just a very complicated phenomenon that's happening now. There's so many different ways to look at it. And in some ways it dones a lot of good as far as rearranging the way that Americans work, but in other ways I still don't know why so many people are out of work.

And so many people are looking for people to work, you know, so I really can't, let's hope in the next few months, more people will join the workforce. 

[01:01:09] Griffin Jones: Yeah. And hopefully it isn't too ugly when the other shoe drops either. But we'll be ready if it does. Terry, how would you wanna conclude for our audience either about what you wanna see happen in the IVF space in the next years or what you feel that every practice owner should be cognitive of, of how they use a pharmacy.

[01:01:30] Terry Malanda: Oh okay. Thank you. I would like, if I had my wish, every physician would interview pharmacies, and, and then try give pharmacies a try. We had I won't mention her name, but we had a nurse here in New Jersey that would always give every pharmacy a try and then come back to us.

So go ahead and give other pharmacies a try sample though and see how they do. And then if you go with the, be the one that services your patients best, and I'm pretty, I'm very confident that we would win in that race. So that's why I'm putting it out there. And I would like doctors and nurses to understand that the pharmacy that they use plays a huge, huge role and in your everyday life with your patient and especially in the patient's life, I really think that we really help patients get through this journey as seamlessly as possible, at least our aspect of it, and do our best for them every day. That's our goal every day is to do our best for every single patient that we can. So that's about it. 

[01:02:32] Griffin Jones: Terry Malanda thank you so much for coming on inside reproductive health. 

[01:02:36] Terry Malanda: Thank you, Griffin. I appreciate the opportunity and I'll see you at PCRS.

[01:02:40] Griffin Jones: Looking forward to it. I'll be there.


129: The Biggest Shifts in Fertility Patient Demographics with Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston

Technology is changing how we look at fertility and family planning. On this episode of Inside Reproductive Health, Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston (Director of Fertility Preservation at Center of Reproductive Medicine, soon to become Shady Grove Fertility Houston) joined Griffin Jones to talk about how the latest technology in fertility preservation affects decisions of families today. 

Listen to the full episode to hear: 

  • The current state of artificial intelligence for fertility doctors.

  • How technology in fertility preservation is changing couples' family planning decision process and what that means for you. 

  • Easy ways to increase referrals from physicians in your area.

  • Griffin’s rant about the metaverse and how it could change the landscape of how you treat patients. 

Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston:

Website: https://infertilitytexas.com/meet-the-team/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janet-bruno-gaston-1bb6a014b/ 

Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.



Transcript

[00:00:00] Griffin Jones: This is just crazy old Griff, throwing out a fastball for everybody.

I was talking with a friend at the Association Reproductive Managers meeting last week and. She has a child in early teens and I said do you think so so's. generation will, do you think more than 50% of them will have children? She said no. And I said, I totally agree again, speculation.

[00:01:02] Griffin Jones: The future of fertility preservation, artificial intelligence, practice areas, the metaverse. These are some of the things that I talk about with Dr. Bruno-Gaston in my episode today. But before we get to that, a little shout out for Dr. Susan Davies from Chicago, sometimes I get really lovely messages from you all, and they don't always have to be out business. So sometimes. You can send me a personal note because you thought of me from hearing the podcast. And I love that. So shout out to Dr. Susan Davies for making my day one time and all the people at her practice, including but not limit to Aanal and Shannon and hope everyone there as well.

Okay. In today's episode with Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston from the center of reproductive medicine, or by the time you are hearing this Shady Grove Houston. She is someone that has dedicated a practice area to fertility preservation. She did her medical school at Morehouse. She did residency at USC, did her fellowship while getting master clinical investigation at Baylor.

And she's presented at many conferences and written on number of topics, including non-invasive markers of gammetes and embryo viability, PCOS, a number of different things. But what we're talking about today is her practice area in fertility preservation. What the future of it is the technologies that will disrupt or increase it.

And what it's like for younger doctors to go on that kind of career track. So I hope you enjoy today's Inside Reproductive Health with Dr. Janet Bruno Gaston.

Dr. Bruno Gaston Janet, welcome to Inside Reproductive Health.

[00:02:44] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here this afternoon.

[00:02:48] Griffin Jones: I'm excited to have you and to talk about fertility preservation. I'm interested in a few different areas. One, because I think it's gonna be the it is one of the fastest growing segments of our field.

I still think that that is going to increase. Maybe some people thought it was gonna grow a lot faster than it did. Maybe some people think it's done growing I still think it is going to be one of the, the fastest growing areas, but I wanna start with just, how did you decide it? This was a particular area of interest for your practice, because there are a lot of young docs listening or there's people at docs at groups that maybe they were a two doctor group now, but now they're at a 7, 10, 12 doctor group and there's areas for different people to carve out their little niche. And so how did you decide that this was something that you wanted to pursue?

[00:03:41] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Yeah, I think for me I'm a little biased by my training experience. I trained at Baylor college of medicine and got an opportunity to work with Dr. Woodard at MD Anderson. So we have a strong exposure, to fertility during our training. And for me it was a niche that didn't allow me to abandon kind of the basic reproductive physiology and the breadth of reproductive pathology that you would see practicing general REI, but added the complexity of cancer diagnosis and working around that.

So it was challenging. It was a very interesting patient population. They're extremely vulnerable and it's a very humbling position to be able to step in, in the midst of everything they're going through and talk about building a family and what future family planning looks like for them. So I really enjoyed that exposure.

During fellowship and went into private practice. And in my group ,there was no one really championing that cause. So it became a very smooth transition for me to help recruit patients, improve access to care and really Kate for more educational awareness about options for fertility preservation, because as you alluded to this field is continuing to grow.

The options are becoming unlimited and it is not only for medically in patients, but as obviously elective as well.

[00:05:14] Griffin Jones: So your interest was peaked by the medically indicated by oncofertility. And then at around this time was, was social egg freezing as they were calling it or elective fertility preservation.

Was that starting to blow up in the public sphere or was it already kind of being talked about on social media? How did your interest from the medically called foresight meet with that.

[00:05:39] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: So I think I was just at the cus where we were starting to see fertility preservation and specifically oocyte cryo preservation being talked about in public platform.

So you'd see it on a good morning America, or a talk show in the afternoon. It was something that people started talking about. And I think with the shift in society of how people are building their career and thinking about family planning. It was just very intuitive that this, this was something that needed to follow that shift.

And while as an infertility specialist, I am not promoting an intentional delay in family planning, but what I am strong and passionate about is providing patients options. And each patient has a different family planning goal. They have a different outlook on where their life is going.

And so providing them options is really important for them to help navigate that process.

[00:06:40] Griffin Jones: So you're physically in Houston to Houston area, right? I am. And I remember in 2015, 2014, 2016, when egg freezing really started to. I wouldn't even say it really took off, but really started to get buzz in New York, LA San Fran was like, okay, it's here now in just a handful of years, it's gonna be in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston.

And then after that probably your Cleveland's Buffalo, Detroit, I could say that I'm from one of those areas. And so did that happen in that way? Did you see a big increase and then start to flatten off. Did you see a continuing maybe not a hockey stick, but an upward into the right curve?

What has growth been like or not been like since you've, you've been practicing in this area?

[00:07:28] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Yeah, I think that's interesting. I can't say if it's been growth from a geographical standpoint, but certainly what I am seeing is different iterations of fertility preservation. Right now I'll say there is a huge push or advocacy mission to extend fertility preservation to the trans community.

And even having discussions about that and what that looks like as people are performing gender reassignment, surgeries hormonal therapy. And I think as a REI we have to now embed ourself in that conversation because a lot of that is happening with Pediatricians or primary care physicians, depending on where they are in life when they decide to make that transition.

But I think an important part of that conversation and something that was missing from that dialogue is whether or not they want. Children or how they want to build a family. Because for a long time, I think the assumption was a part of making that transition was letting that goal go. And certainly fertility preservation does not require that.

And it provides very unique options for that particular patient population to consider family planning.

[00:08:40] Griffin Jones: So that's one demographic that is increasing in utilization of fertility preservation. I wonder if you're seeing it this way, where we think of fertility preservation is for those that want to extend their family building window and they it's like an extension of their plans.

And I wonder if as the generation's grown a more useful way of thinking about it is maybe not even an extension of plans, but an option for people to change their mind. Right. Like, I really wonder if the, if the birth rate just continues to decline and doesn't stop. So I think part of what we're seeing in REI right now, part of the reason why everyone is so busy is because the median age of childbirth has gone up.

Right. And so I wonder if, that's just, okay, it's gone up until it's gotten to the point where the trend just continues, that people don't want to have children, but fertility preservation is an opportunity to say well, but if you change your mind, do you think people are starting to think, do you think about it that way or do you think it's very much the extension of a plan?

[00:09:57] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: I see both and I'm smiling because as you were describing that maybe I might change my mind. I mean, I've been across the room, had a patient say that to me. Hey, I don't even know if I want kids. This is something my job is covering and I hadn't thought about it before. And maybe I will in the future.

So that's why I'm here today. So certainly patients are starting to look at and think about their reproductive years and say, Hey, what do I want to accomplish here? And if family planning is not a part of that immediate goal. Certainly fertility preservation can be an option to say, Hey, I may be interested in this later on.

So yes, I do agree that there is a subset of patients that strictly want to not close the door on that option of building a family in the future.

[00:10:55] Griffin Jones: I wonder if it just like becomes what we do as a field. Like I really believe this is total speculation. I have no data to support. This is just crazy old Griff, throwing out a fastball for everybody.

I was talking with a friend at the association reproductive managers meeting last week and. She has a child in early teens and I said do you think so generation will, do you think more than 50% of them will have children? She said no. And I said, I totally agree again, speculation.

And I was like, well, what percentage do you think? And we're like, ah, I don't know, 25% again. No, no to data whatsoever, but it's seems to me that this is the direction that we're going in. And so we're what we offer part of. Of what you all offer as the clinicians in this field is the opportunity for someone to not lock that in.

[00:11:50] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Mm-hmm mm-hmm

Yeah. I mean, I completely agree. And while we don't have data to look at that long term regrets, things like that, those studies are just kind of gathering information because as you said REI in general is in its infancy still when you compare it to other disciplines of medicine and certainly fertility preservation is so we're still gathering data on what that looks like in terms of utilization regret in terms of what, or they did not, or did not did, or did not use fertility preservation.

I don't know if I think there will be a huge paradigm shift in terms of the decision to build families certainly finances and, and just the structure of our society have changed the way people look at the amount of children they want in their household. And when they decide to start their family but I do agree that having fertility preservation does change the sense of urgency particularly for women obviously in that they can and consider other things in life and when they start considering other things in life differently, I, I think.

There will be a shift in value system. I don't know how long that will take and if we're just seeing that evolve. But yeah, those are my thoughts.

[00:13:12] Griffin Jones: Well, I just think for all the people listening that have like preteens and teenagers, it's like, I doubt the ability. I doubt the ability of that cohort to be able to raise children.

It'd be nice to be wrong, but I really, but I they're gonna have the metaverse. I say that somewhat in tongue and cheek, but, but honestly, Janet, you say that kind of joking, I'm dead serious about the metaverse and we look at in this, I think the metaverse is at now. I'm really gonna go off on it too.

She's gonna be like, why did I go on this guy's podcast? I came to talk about fertility preservation and I got him down a rabbit hole of the metaverse. I think it's as possible of a paradigm shifter as genetic testing and CRISPR for childbirth that it could. So if the value prop behind CRISPR and genetic testing is.

Look at all of these awful diseases and traits that could be avoided. Well, doesn't the metaverse have that to offer at least once it gets to a point where it feels as viscerally real as the world that you and I are in today. And at that point it's like, well well in the metaverse I don't have to be short.

I don't have to be chubby or scrawny. I can be ripped. I could be six, five. I can change my eye, color, hair, color, skin color, whenever I want.

[00:14:30] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Yeah.

[00:14:30] Griffin Jones: And I don't even need to maintain this physical form. I can go to another one. I could have children in the metaverse and so.

[00:14:38] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: It's scary.

[00:14:39] Griffin Jones: I don't have a question there. I don't, I just. You can respond to my.

[00:14:43] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: You can go, you know, AI is infiltrating every, every aspect of our society. We're not gonna be able to evade that. It's interesting to see it in medicine and that's changing our field as well.

But I mean, you're right. I don't even think we can fathom right now, what that's gonna look like. For, for the younger generation growing up, it's just gonna be so foreign. But I imagine as the technology improves, like you said, and they can address all senses so that you truly feel like are existing in this virtual world then yeah.

[00:15:22] Griffin Jones: Well, let's get back on solid ground and you gave me a good segue. You set me up well, which is that artificial intelligence is changing every aspect of everything much, certainly our field. How about fertility preservation in particular? How has AI changed it in the last three or four years or are most of the changes still to come?

And if they are mostly still to come, what do you see on the horizon?

[00:15:47] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: I think most of the changes are still to come. I don't know if it's specific to fertility preservation, but I will say that there's a, a lot utility. And research going into the use of AI in the lab. And that's because a lot of what we do, a lot of what the embryologists do to their credit is monitoring and picking up and looking for non-invasive markers of embryo viability.

And I think AI just as it has done in radiology and pathology has been shown to be more active, obviously we need to program it. So the system only works based on what you put in, but I think over time a lot of what happens in the lab will be taken care of by AI. And it may lead to better surveillance of embryos.

It may lead to new markers of embryo viability, new ways for us to assess viability to your point about a specific example in fertility preservation, one of the things that's difficult in counseling patients is. What is a good number and yes, we have studies looking at the outcomes from women who do oocyte cryo preservation, but at the time of a cryo, we really know very little about the health of the egg outside of morphology and maturity level.

Well, there are a lot of studies looking at metabolic competence. Right. So what is happening from a developmental standpoint to suggest that this egg is healthier than the other, and they're using microscopy and fluorescence imaging, and all of that can be streamlined with AI to kind of help better counsel patients on what this means at the time of cryo preservation and preparation for future family planning.

So I do see a lot of work there.

[00:17:37] Griffin Jones: Is it mostly to come because the technology's not there yet, or the business model isn't there yet? Or is it because clinics and labs are slammed and they might not be as adopting the newest possible technology as quickly as possible because they're so busy.

Which of those is it?

[00:18:00] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: I think a little bit of both. I do think the technology is there it's being used in other fields. I think we have been slow to adapt a little behind in that sense and, and part of it and to their credit embryo ologists, they are very particular, there's a very type a personality and there's ownership in, in what they do.

And obviously as a clinician in debt, because I can only do so much what happens in the lab impacts my patient's outcomes profoundly. And so I think that would be a bit of a culture shift for them taking away what they have been doing primarily for, since the inception of this field.

So I think that may be a little bit. Uncomfortable for them and perhaps for us too. So I think the technology is there. There's not enough data to support it yet. But it's coming.

[00:18:52] Griffin Jones: It's coming well, embryologists are so busy right now that even if they're, even if they became the case manager of more cases, but their own, or at least that part of their workload is reduced.

I don't see them going out of work in the next 10 or 20 years. I think we're we're, I believe David Sable when he says we're only doing. 200 to 250,000 cycles of the 2 million that we should be doing in the United States. And for years it really seemed like the clinic was the bottleneck.

And it was like, okay, well, we can't a lot of, at least maybe since 20 17, 20 18, a lot of clinics were busy, but they could still do more cycles in the lab, if they could convert more patients to treatment. Now it's probably three quarters of labs are slammed too. And so I don't see that going out of, out of work and I wonder what what I wanna talk more about the oh, LA and artificial intelligence are adopting it from your vantage point, because probably a couple times a month, Janet, I get.

Hit up from startups in the IVF space that are in AI mm-hmm and some of them have way too much homework to do. It's like, go prove your concept first and then gimme a, but some of them it's like, this is legit. And they're having as hard of a time as anyone getting their product to market.

And seems to me like this could solve a big problem. So can you talk a little bit more about I don't know if you can think of any examples or Or just maybe why we haven't included AI in fertility preservation as much as perhaps it should be.

[00:20:28] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: I think there's still a, a bit of fear of not about how this will replace me. But just some fear about trusting that what we do and the stakes that we take with patients as much as possible, we strive for perfection. And so committing a patient to a, that you're not comfortable to. It's a very difficult transition for both clinicians, theologists and researchers, and we should be critical and we should be hesitant to adopt things. Because our field, all of the iterations of that with developmental and how that impacts offering in generations, like we have to be steadfast and holding to a certain standard because we are the gatekeepers that ultimately this technology could impact an entire generation. So I think a bit of it is fear. A bit of is anxiety with change and not feeling comfortable yet. And I think the data is still lack.

I think, I think there's still room for us to have more robust. Data to support that science, but the technology is certainly there. The technology is certainly there and it's being used in other fields. And I think it will just take time before we feel. Comfortable with that. I mean, even onsite cryo preservation was experimental until 20 12, 20 13.

We've had the technology of, of how to do that and it's evolved and improved, but it still took some time. It still took some time for us to be comfortable with that.

[00:22:02] Griffin Jones: So you were, you were talking about Using AI for embryos a little bit earlier. Is there bigger opportunity for oocytes? And I know someone who's doing that, I don't know that I can, or that I will, I won't say their name right now, but if people are interested, they can email me privately.

But one what , the value they purport to bring proposed to bring is that there isn't a way of being able to grade oocytes other than just theologist, examining EEG, but that there's an opportunity for artificial intelligence simply by compounding all of the possible learning that it can do.

Is that an area that you've seen or, or is most of the AI that you've seen been geared toward the embryo?

[00:22:46] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Most has been geared towards the embryo. But I brought up just the fluorescence imaging because I did a lot of research with PCOS and looking at mitochondria and mitochondrial health and how that translates into embryo health.

And one of the things we came across in partnering with the core microscopy at Baylor is just that they have a lot of fluorescent imaging techniques to look at without getting too scientific, but redox potentials and just markers of metabolic competence. And that could be potentially something that is another marker of oocyte viability and does, and can be used at the time of cryo preservation to more objectively counsel patients about what they have at the time of freezing. And that's something that can be trained through AI, once you start to figure out algorithms and track outcomes so.

[00:23:46] Griffin Jones: When do you feel like we became ready for prime time or do some people still have a way to go?

Does it depend on the lab? Does it depend on the clinic becoming ready for prime time for fertility preservation in the field? Because I'm not a clinician sometimes that makes me ask dumb questions, but sometimes, it gives me a perspective of looking at this from someone who is not educated about it, which is the majority of patients, their first.

Go around and one concern had been that, well, we, we know how well these eggs freeze, but we don't know how well they thaw and so when do you feel like we became ready for prime time for fertility preservation to market it, to offer it to the majority of patients who could benefit it from it?

Or does it still depend on the lab? Are there still people who aren't ready for prime time?

[00:24:37] I just got back from the Association of Reproductive Managers Meeting in Atlanta. And you know what everyone was talking about? Every embryologist, every nurse, every manager, every practice owner that was there was talking about burnout. That's what everybody's talking about everywhere, by the way. And every aspect of the workforce. Everyone's talking about burnout and we can keep trying to replace people who also seem to be burnt out. The people that we're bringing in are burnt out from something else. So that's one solution. We can also do things to make the log lighter because when you take 10 people, on a log and you take four of them off those six people are burnt out.

So if you can't put four more people back on the log, or you can't put six more people back on the log, you have to make that load lighter. And one way of doing that is using Engaged MD. And I'm at a point now where I feel like it could be a real disservice to your staff, to not be using Engaged MD at the point where so many of your staffs are overworked.

So many of your labs are slammed, but also your managers, your nurses, your billing team. That anything that we can do to take things off of any of their plates, especially we're not just taking something off their plate in the moment, but we're also using that to make their interactions and lives with patients easier and better beyond those tasks, we should be using it. And that's what Engaged MD does.

Your nurses and your care staff should not be doing things like telling the same thing to the same patients over and over again, when the patient has too much information to absorb, but time anyway, when they could be talking to really educated patients, meaning that you've educated them by using Engaged MD's platform ahead of time having a, a smaller window where they're repeating things and not having to do things like track down consents because Engaged MD does all of that for you.

Burnout is it's the worst that I've seen since I've been in the field. If you can replace all of your people and, and overstaff, 'em great. Most of us can't. And so when we have to use technological solutions. And for those of you that are listening, Engaged MD is already in more than half of practices out there.

And if you are not there, you're now on the wrong side of the bell and it could be at the expense of your staff. And so I hope that you'll use the opportunity to go to engagedmd.com/irh. They'll give you 25% off your implementation fee. If you use my name or you use Inside Reproductive Health mentioned that you heard it on the podcast, but don't do it for me.

Do it for your staff, engaged md.com/irh. Now back to my conversation with Dr. Janet Bruno.

So when do you feel like we became ready for prime time for fertility preservation to market it, to offer it to the majority of patients who could benefit it from it?

Or does it still depend on the lab? Are there still people who aren't ready for prime time?

[00:27:51] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: I don't think so. I think most people are very comfortable fertility preservation, I think once ASRM removed the experimental label. And we had all of the studies looking at long-term outcomes, most people were very comfortable.

Now I will say that there's certainly an increase in to see, because you have a lot more celebrities talking about fertility preservation. It has infiltrated social media. And so it has a bigger platform primarily through the work of the patients. They have been advertising this more for us than we have.

If I wanna be honest about that and through that need, I think is what has drawn our attention to say, Hey, this is something that they value. This is something that's important to them. And so, because it's important to them, it has to become important to me.

[00:28:39] Griffin Jones: I was gonna ask about the, the advertising part coming from the people are seeing celebrities talk about it and, and.

And following them on social media of their journeys. Is this an area that is still under referred from other provi even before let's even before we get to the elective side, even on just the ENCO side, is this still under referred from other providers?

[00:29:03] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: I'm so glad you said that I embarrassingly so, embarrassingly so, it is difficult to create a network that geographically spans a large region outside of a metropolitan hub, like Houston or big cities that you mentioned. So that really creates a disparity for patients on what they're able to be offered. If they're offered in what they're able to receive it in a timely manner.

And to me, that's just uncomfortable. Because this is a standard part of REI that, , any group should be able to perform for patients. And the fact that there are these disparities that exist one city outside of here is, is just very disheartening. But to your point, this is not even entering into the elective space.

This is speaking in just medically indicated. I can't tell you how many patients I see after chemotherapy and they say to me, well, No one told me, they said that I should kind of check it out after, or they mentioned it briefly, but in the midst of everything that was happening, that was difficult.

So I really tried to prevent myself as a resource. I reserve spots so that if patients need to be seen immediately, they can come in. I've assembled a team that we kind of get things started in a very streamlined way. I partner with local pharmacies to be able to get medications delivered within 48 to 72 hours, if we need to do random starts.

So those are things that I put in place, so that if I can make this process easier for them, both their provider and the patient, then they will be more receptive to referring to me and allowing their patients to go through a treatment before they come back.

[00:30:56] Griffin Jones: It seems to me again, this is coming from a non-clinician, but it seems to me almost negligent to not refer to an REI as if, especially if someone was about to go through chemo. And I probably wouldn't have believed that happened at any kind of scale, but I was in my home city. I was talking to an oncologist at a social event, had nothing to do with work, told her about what I do for a living.

She had no idea of the REI's in our town. She had never referred out and she said, oh, maybe, yeah, I should start doing that. It's like, yeah, maybe you should.

Why don't you go ahead and do that. So is it because, I mean, do they think that they just have, so, I mean, they do, they cancer of course is life and death in many instances.

And so maybe I'm asking you to speculate, but I'm asking you to speculate why do you think that It's not as broadly toted of a message.

[00:31:55] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Yeah. I mean in their defense, there is a lot going on. There is a lot going on even emotionally for the patient and the provider. And so in the midst of this long discussion that they have to talk about, they then have to remember also bring up fertility preservation.

And so I think in the long list of things that are a priority for them to get through with the patient, fertility preservation may be somewhere on the bottom or doesn't exist. I also think that there is an assumption as providers we have our own bias as much as we try to ,exclude them that one, this process is expensive.

It's timely. You may not be able to afford it. So what is the purpose of going through all these hoops just to say, well, I'm not gonna do it anyway. And so I've had patients come back and say, well, providers said, Hey it's expensive. It's out of pocket. You're probably not gonna wanna do it.

And when you present the option like that that really isn't counseling the patient in a very neutral way. And so I think a lot of what I try to do is even if it's just a quick fact sheet that I'm like, Hey, you can pick this up and take in your office so that they can save their visit to do their counseling.

And the patient can then read about this and contact the clinic as they need to is a compromise between us both. I'm just really too trying to make their job easy without taking up much time from the primary counseling that they wanna do.

[00:33:26] Griffin Jones: Is it the same with elective fertility, press for OB GYNs. Do you suppose that they're not doing, and maybe this is an assumption, but from what I'm gathering, they're not doing a whole lot of family building counseling. They're treating people who need to be treated. They're referring to REI's once they, once they encounter infertility or once they encounter something like endo or, or P C O S.

But just from a oh, you're 32 and this is what you want next in life. I don't know that's happening. What education needs to be bridged for the fertility preservation side for referring providers?

[00:34:04] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: So to your point with generalists, I actually do think they do quite a bit of family planning and family planning in our world is always expansion, growth, wanting kids, but family planning in their world also includes contraception.

So they do have very clear conversations with patients about what are their family planning go OS and what I will say for the elective for fertility preservation. I would say the patient leads that referral. So most times when I get patients coming in for elective, fertility preservation, it's truly something that they advocated for themselves.

They said, Hey, I heard about this. I wanna know this can I see someone? And that's how they come 'em to me. Or if they come on their own accord directly to REI. They come in, well read about, about the process and, and kind of have an idea of what it looks like. So it's interesting. There there's a little more initiative there because they have a very clear goal versus from the uncle fertility perspective, this may not have been something you were even ready to think about.

And now I have to pose this question to you. So the that's my thought there. And then in terms of just how do we improve referrals from, from, from providers across disciplines? I think like you said education making them aware that this is accessible, this can be done in a timely manner.

We're welcome to collaborate, to help coordinate care with patients so that we don't create treatment delays and that compromise their cancer diagnosis or their treatment outcomes. So a lot of what I do is just education and lending myself as a resource. And like I said, creating as simple as a.

A patient fact sheet with your card and your clinic's information is an easy way to walk into an oncology office. Maybe it's Heon or , surge on. And you just come in and you're like, Hey, I'm an REI in the area, I have a strong interest in fertility preservation. If you come across patient patients feel free to refer them.

This is a patient fact sheet. They can read this in the waiting room while they're waiting to see you. And if they have any follow up questions, they can contact me directly. That makes their job easy. I haven't taken up counseling time from what they need to, to get across to the patient so for them that works.

[00:36:32] Griffin Jones: So we talked about referral patterns. We talked about referral tactics. We talked about some Terminator, two stuff. We talked about your interest in fertility preservation as a practice area. I wanna go more into practice areas in general, because there are younger docs listening and thinking of, of what that will be.

So how do you delineate those duties among a group of so I think we can say now that you're, you're part of the center of Reproductive Medicine in Houston, which was a, a six, seven doc group.

[00:37:03] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: It was prior to me joining, there was four. I replaced one physician and one retired. So there's four of us now, but we're kind of like acquiring more.

So we're getting there.

[00:37:14] Griffin Jones: You got some more docs coming and I even know one of them. And then you also have a big announcement as joining one of our bigger groups, the Shady Grove group and so when one's doing that, and in your case, we're talking about fertility preservation, but for other people it's gonna be recurring pregnancy loss.

It might be, and might be endometriosis. It might. How does that work within a practice? Or how could it work? Because I imagine the way it works varies differently from practice to practice at some places, it's probably just a title at other places, it really is a practice area. And so what does it mean to actually have that practice area?

[00:37:51] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Yeah. So I definitely agree that can manifest differently depending on the business model and practice you join for me, I knew that I wanted fertility preservation to be a part of my practice. And so I made that very clear on my interview. So for the fellows and recent grads, if there are something that you want to continue to pursue, perhaps it was in line with your research, your thesis from fellowship.

Be clear about that on your interview, because oftentimes the practice is excited about that because that becomes an area that they can then advertise and market and tap into that they probably are doing a few fertility preservation cycles here and there, but if you're, you're passionate enough about it, and you're thinking about becoming a center for that I think that's actually a selling point on, on an interview for you.

And so I talked very candidly about my interests on my interview and set some for myself and I'm happy. To be able to be achieving those goals and creating partnerships that improve access and more importantly coverage for fertility preservation. And from a business side, those partnerships are important because that becomes another pipeline for you to get referrals for patients.

So that has been helpful for me. And that has been my approach in, in kind of carving a niche for myself and getting to know clinicians in the area that you work. I mean, medicine is always a small community, but it can be joining local societies going to meetings just so that they have a face with the name.

And that could be the way that you start getting referrals from an office persistently. So I say definitely network make sure that you partner that you're partnering in line with your career goals and, and be consistent with that.

[00:39:50] Griffin Jones: So I see the selling point for you, Dr. Bruno guest honored you, the physician, you, the fellow whoever's listening as a different differentiator and a way to build your practice pretty quickly.

What about though, making sure that you are not sold by the clinic, by the practice owner, by whoever fellows are scarce right now, Janet, there's 44 of 'em. They're always scarce, but maybe only maybe only 20% of people would've hired 10 years ago. I don't know. But now it's like anybody is trying to get a doc right now. And so oh yeah, you wanna have a fertility preservation pregnant? Of course. Sure. We'll name it the Janet Bruno guest on fertility preservation consult room. You have any deceased grandparents? We'll name the garden for them. So like, most people, I believe in our field, I do believe the vast majority of people in our field are ethical. Really good people. There's probably a couple that aren't, but it, but they're they're I do believe they're the exception. Most people are here with great hearts very often though even the people with great hearts. Sometimes they just want to, they just wanna get the deal done. Not cuz they're bad people, but they're just like, oh yeah, Jan

sure. Yeah. That's what you wanna do because they don't really have a clear picture of it. In their mind and they're willing to put whatever placeholder there without firmly checking it against the, what, the picture that the candidate has in their mind so.

[00:41:14] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Yes.

[00:41:15] Griffin Jones: So I'm cautioning people right now. This is advice that I may or may not be qualified to give, but for the people listening if they have a practice area in mind and what that entails that they should be getting that clear picture from the hiring group mm-hmm and, and making sure they're in accordance and, and probably making sure that it's in writing simply because again, not because most people are unethical, but because writing just helps to really firm up X expectations.

Yeah. And so what did that have to look like for you or, and what does it have to look like for someone that's really serious about a practice area?

[00:41:49] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: No I definitely agree with you. You wanna know that they're gonna be able to support that, that they respect that and they understand that that's something that is a part of your career goal.

For me, I kind of laid out a plan. I said, this is what I want to achieve by year one, I had a goal of working with some specific organizations. The mission is a nonprofit that provides grants to fund fertility preservation cycles. They do require a contract with the clinic. And so I told them very candidly, Hey, this is an organization that I would profit with partner with, how do you feel about that?

Have you done that in the past? They very receptive to that. And I kind of, because I worked one of my mentors, Dr. Woodard at MB Anderson, I had a sense logistically of how she had things set up. And so meeting with my nurse, I said, Hey, , what's my nurse's experience. ? Who would she be open to, I mean, I met everyone during the interview process you can take as many visits as you want.

That's something like, I didn't know either. I had a lot of people that said, Hey, I went back to the practice and like kind of just shadowed a day to work with them, to get a feel for the culture. So when your interview and considering practices. Yes, reviewing the contract and, and having a lawyer look over that is important, but there's also just a sense of culture that you want to assess.

And that's hard to get that from just reading black and white. And so a lot of times, I just came back up there and was like, Hey, I'm gonna kind of shadow today. I wanna see, the feel, the flow of clinic and those things. And I was asking the nurse would you be open to that?

What are your thoughts about that? Just getting a sense of how hard was this gonna be for me to build? Yeah.

[00:43:31] Griffin Jones: You could see how is she fighting? Yeah, because they'll say whatever, but the nurse, if the nurse is like, yeah, yeah. Then I'm doing that. You can get a little bit of an indicator.

That's a good idea. It's really good idea.

[00:43:41] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: We talk to them, the people, the support staff around you like everyone from the front desk to the ma, because you really get a sense of perspective from everyone's everyone's job. So that to me, made a difference. I'm someone that has a strong instinct. And that means more to me than a lot of things.

[00:44:01] Griffin Jones: I'll let you have the final thought, whether you want it to be on fertility preservation on building a practice area within a practice there aren't dystopian futures would, how would you like to. On the better coating remarks on the metaphor.

Yeah.

[00:44:17] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: No, I mean, thank you for having me on, I mean, this is a great afternoon for me to, to talk about fertility preservation.

It is something I am extremely passionate about, and as you can see it. The fact that we are not getting appropriate access to care, the healthcare disparities that exist across so many different communities. It is important for us as Reis to really champion that cause and make sure that we are constantly trying to advocate for those patients and provide betters opportunities for future family planning.

Because that is really important both for medically indicated patients. And for those who decide to choose fertility preservation, electively there are great organizations out there who are invested in, in helping practices, improve access. So for those of youngs musicians or anyone who decides, Hey, this may be an interest of, of, of mine.

Please check out the chicks mission, Baby Quest Foundation. These are great nonprofits that are strictly looking for clinics to partner with, and they are on the ground. They are lobbying for legislation to improve access and coverage to care. And they're just looking for REI clinics to partner with so that they can and have patients come through so.

[00:45:40] Griffin Jones: We'll link to those organizations in the show notes, Dr. Janet Bruno Gaston. Thank you so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health.

[00:45:48] Dr. Janet Bruno-Gaston: Thank you.

Thank you.

The Fertility Website Rip Off: 6 Tips to Protect Doctors

By Shaina Vojtko and Griffin Jones

Let’s just hope fertility doctors aren’t paying attention

Most fertility practice owners redesigned or built a new website in the last decade, and they might be getting hosed.

The website development-marketing problem isn’t unique to fertility doctors. If you’re the executive of a fertility company or any business for that matter, these tips are equally relevant to you. There’s just an established category of marketing companies that takes advantage of physicians and some of them have concentrations of fertility doctors.

The problem: paying for website maintenance with a big marketing markup

Your new website project is finally complete and search engines are starting to reap the fruits of your labor.

Now, regular updates and maintenance are crucial to keeping your site running at full capacity. In most cases, the first touchpoint a prospective fertility patient has with their provider is their website.

Security is the primary reason that website maintenance is so important. When you don’t make website maintenance a priority, it’s easy for hackers to find vulnerabilities. With a few clicks, they can easily target an outdated site.

As a marketing tool, your website was designed to provide information and turn visitors into new fertility patient inquiries. An up-to-date site and content management system (CMS) demonstrates credibility and communicates that it is safe for visitors to submit their information to you.

And because security and maintenance are such a need, some marketing companies take advantage. They bundle in low return marketing services and mark up what should be a low cost expense.

We’re not talking about small firms with good hearts that struggle with keeping the mission (scope) from drifting, while not being so rigid that they fail to help the client when they could meaningfully do so. That’s a natural tension that all client services firms face.

No, we’re talking about large medical marketing agencies whose business model is undeserving doctors by scaling their overpriced packages, including arbitrary blog and social posts, or ambiguous ongoing Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Make investments, pay expenses, and know which is which.

Remember a $10,000 expense that generates nothing is more expensive than a $2 million investment that generates $5 million. Return is more important than cost, though the higher cost the bigger the problem if there’s no return.

The best way to keep your fertility company’s website updated and protected from hackers, while not overpaying for it, is to have a website maintenance package that is separate from hosting and from your marketing investment.

Here are six tips to help you:

1. Your marketing agency can hire a developer, but don’t hire a development agency to do your marketing

Digital marketing agencies and website development agencies were usually one in the same in the early days of the internet. Because each has become so specialized, it’s far more effective for them to partner than to try to do it all.

Fertility Bridge, for example, has done, and will do, plenty of website builds and redesigns…but we are not a dev firm.

For the convenience of our clients and for the continuity of branding and messaging, we have preferred developers on our contract team with whom we’ve partnered on many successful fertility websites. We can use them and include the cost of development in a one time project. Or we can use the client’s developer while we provide project management and design.

2. Quote maintenance separate from build

Ask for the cost of ongoing website maintenance, including security and routine updates to be quoted separately from the site build.

You may need continuous improvement in marketing and business development but keep those separate from the maintenance of a new site. Again using Fertility Bridge as an example, after we redesign or build a new website, the minimal maintenance agreement is between the developer and the client, completely untethered from the client’s engagement with us.

3. Budget for both website hosting and website maintenance

While both have associated costs, web hosting and web maintenance are two separate functions. Both are necessary for the health and existence of your website. The main purpose of web hosting is to get your website live on the internet so people can access it.

4. Keep the hosting cost the smallest

When budgeting annually for maintenance fees, don’t forget to budget for hosting costs, too. You can expect to pay anywhere from $25-75 per month for hosting with an annual contract from WP Engine.

In order to keep your website online, you’ll need a reliable web host. While there are plenty of options for hosting providers, make sure to pick one that is designed for speed. A fast loading website is key to a strong user experience and good Google rankings. We recommend WP Engine or DreamHost but strongly encourage you to take the advice of your developer as they are well versed in the specific needs of your website.

5. Use this checklist to select a good maintenance plan

A good maintenance plan covers security but should also take into consideration routine content updates and changes to website pages.

  • WordPress Core Updates

  • Theme and Plugin Updates

  • Security, Uptime Monitoring, and Hack Clean-up

  • Regular Back-ups

  • Access to Support Resources

  • Content Management*

  • Performance Optimizations

While package costs can vary significantly based on the level of customization and care needed to handle your individual site, it is reasonable and typical to see costs that range from $500 annually for lean updates to $5,000 or more annually for robust updates.

6. *Have someone on your team that can update content

Minor content updates are a tension point between fertility companies and their agencies. Minor updates are those like

  • Adding office hours for satellite office on location page

  • Removing staff member from about us page

  • Changing PGD to PGT-M on old blog post

  • Deleting Zika pregnancy warning from home page

Sporadic requests like these are not a good use of the developer’s time to receive, nor yours to send.

You don’t need an employee to create major pieces of content, a marketing agency can do that. You need someone inside your organization who can make content updates to your website. If you’re a giant fertility company you may have a whole team, but even a small REI practice needs at least one person who can access your website’s CMS.

*Being able to make content updates is not the same as having the relevant skills to properly maintain a website. If your team member causes an error while updating a page, you need to have someone retained that can fix it.

INVEST FOR RETURN, KEEP FEES SEPARATE

Sometimes fertility companies have to invest a lot in marketing, but it should be for the return of future value. Don’t buy services you don’t need because they’re bundled with something you do need. Keep website maintenance separate from build, hosting, and marketing. Train someone in your organization to make minor updates to your website. Follow these six tips instead.

If you think your fertility website is preventing you from reaching your business goals, consider Fertility Bridge’s strategic guidance to determine how it plays into a greater market or brand strategy.

Start your business assessment with our Goal and Competitive Diagnostic for just $597 here.

Good and Bad First Impressions: 6 Pillars of a New Fertility Patient Concierge Team

By Kathy Houser and Griffin Jones

“You only get one chance to make a first impression”

Think about how important it is to a fertility practice. You can invest everything you want in branding, advertising, and a nice building. But if your prospective patient's first interaction with your team betrays that first impression, the result may be even worse.

First impressions not only get people in the door, they set the expectations for the process in which fertility patients need to trust you all but implicitly. In order for the first points of contact with your clinic to be the gold standard of concierge service, their goals must be aligned with those of the practice and the patient.

That’s why we’re using the broad term of New Fertility Patient Concierge Team instead of separate terms like call center, digital chat team, or new patient navigators.

In other resources, we’ll talk about the structures of those roles, but in this article, we’re giving you the six pillars for aligning this team with the measured growth and improvement of your IVF center.

They are

  1. Practice Goals

  2. Team Outcomes

  3. Team Profile

  4. Education/Coaching

  5. Recognition/Evaluation

  6. Incentives

1. PRACTICE GOALS:

New patient concierges aren’t just people that answer your phone. They positively or negatively impact at least four major business goals of any fertility center.

  1. Patient satisfaction

  2. New patient visits

  3. Specific provider volume increase

  4. Targeted region/office volume increase

When the roles aren’t aligned with specific practice business goals, the systems for how they are evaluated, incentivized, and hired become expensive and counterproductive.


2. TEAM OUTCOMES

The New Patient Concierge Team doesn’t have total control over the business goals, but you can measure their impact by these key performance indicators (KPI):

  1. New patient appointments scheduled

    • Total

    • By team member

    • Relative to goal

    • Year over year

    • Month over month

  2. Conversion to appointment

  3. Cancellations rescheduled

3. TEAM PROFILE

To put the right person in a concierge seat, we are looking for someone who is lower (but not too low) in competitive drive and high in empathy and compassion. They take pride in being a resource.

To find the right candidate who does not mind repetitive actions and thrives on helping others

1. Use a personality assessment

Such as The Caliper Profile. For empathy, this test screens for “a combination of traits that can help you see how well a person reads a room” and “Are they flexible or rigid?” That’s extremely insightful when hiring someone who has to be responsive to customers or in our case, patients. Once an applicant or employee takes the Caliper Profile their results are measured against one or more validated job models. For this role, the candidate needs to score high in critical competencies such as “relationship building” and “composure and resilience”.

In Meyer Briggs for example, the perfect fit might be a Discoverer Advocate. The obligatory disclaimer on personality tests: They are a useful tool for seeing how likely someone is to be a good fit for their seat. One’s tested personality type does not universally qualify or disqualify them from a role.

2. Promote the mission

Promote the sense of pride of providing people struggling with infertility with hope.The life changing and highly personal service they provide is a motivator, for the right people in these seats.

3. Pay above customer service industry average

The cost of living index varies across markets, but the range for a concierge customer service person is between $20-$27 per hour.

If the range seems higher than what you would pay for someone who isn’t exceptionally money-motivated, consider two things. The first is the rate of inflation and the increase of resignations and wage expectations in 2022. The Great Resignation is occurring amid rising inflation, and as employers face the tightest labor market in recent history. The latest inflation reading from the Consumer Price Index (published 12/10/21) came in at 6.8%, the highest year-over-year increase since 1982.

The second is the outcomes for which these personnel are responsible for achieving. When their alignment with growth in business goals is measured by the aforementioned KPIs, they’re clearly worth the investment. We will further detail how to outline their incentives with the goals of the fertility practice.

4. EDUCATION/COACHING:

Your call center and new patient navigators must be experts in particular topics about the clinic and infertility. There can be no concierge level service without mastery of the material.

There are at least twelve elements in the syllabus that every call center and new patient concierge must know cold. If you’d like Fertility Bridge’s curriculum for new patient concierges, we provide full guidance for this in our Lead Conversion System.

Lastly, in the bucket of education and coaching, if you find that a particular team member is not performing to the level of the others, it is necessary to “coach up” or move them out of that role, as a negative attitude or lack of skill set frustrates and demotivates the rest.

5. RECOGNITION:

Methods of recognition create an atmosphere of team and individual accomplishment. They reinforce that all team members are striving for the same goals and success.

It is important to systemize recognition above other incentives to support the natural personality motivators of the concierge team.

Here are four ways of motivating your concierge team using their own internal drivers:

  1. Tally Board

  2. Practice-wide email

  3. Thank You Board

    • In which anyone can post a thank you to anyone else in the office.

    • Where staff and potentially patients can see it. Keeping it in staff only areas such as the kitchen won’t allow patients to appreciate your amazing culture of internal support.

  4. Patient Compliment Repository

    From social media, online reviews, patient satisfaction surveys

6. INCENTIVES:

You’ve intentionally selected people who are motivated by helping others and you’ve established a system of recognition to ensure they perceive that benefit of the job.

Because the tasks of an ongoing new patient welcome team are on-going, every day, endeavors, we have to be careful about additional incentives. We don’t want to book new patient visits at all costs. Hiring someone who is too high on competitive drive and gearing their compensation plan too much toward booked appointments is a recipe for pressuring new patients. We don’t want that.

We do want to help people who are struggling to build their family to be able to get expertise from a fertility specialist.

Using incentives for reaching goals should be limited and attainable, otherwise, you will do more harm than good.The incentives should:

  1. Connect to one of the desired outcomes whether it’s for the team or an individual

  2. Review and recognize weekly

  3. Reward monthly or quarterly

  4. Reference core values

Rewards for Achieving Goals

  • Gift cards

  • Customized gift baskets

  • Event tickets

  • Team lunch

  • Use of desirable parking spot for a week if employees are on site

Align Your New Patient Concierges’ Goals with Those of Practice and Patients

The folks you hire to answer your phones are so much more than just that. They are the first point of contact for potential patients, they set the tone and convey confidence and knowledge from the first interaction. Employ the six pillars to set your concierge team up for success. Use personality assessment tools, hire well, train and invest in the people who greet and attend to callers into your practice and you will see the benefits over and over again.

Fertility Bridge has a proven system and dedicated staff for improving and empowering new fertility patient concierge teams. If you’d like our help, enroll in the Goal Diagnostic here and we will be happy to discuss the framework with you.

5 Steps To Improving Your Fertility Clinic’s Online Reputation

By Griffin Jones

Yikes.

It’s no different than what many of us do when choosing a new hair salon or restaurant, they search online. 

Years ago online reviews of doctors were scarce, and even fewer considered trustworthy, but times have changed.  

 According to a survey from MobiHealthNews, 95% of U.S. adults believed online ratings and reviews to be reliable.  Even more interesting, 70% of those surveyed said online ratings influenced their choice of doctor. 

With the increase in prevalence and weight of online reviews, today it’s more important than ever to take action and proactively manage your clinic’s reputation by following the 5 steps to improving your fertility clinic’s online reputation.

  1. Provide Concierge Service

  2. Claim & Maintain Listings

  3. Request Reviews

  4. Manage Reviews

  5. Market Reviews

Let’s break down each component. 

1). Provide Concierge Level of Service 100% of the time

While putting systems and services in place to improve and maintain an online reputation is necessary, your clinic must first have a concierge level of service written into the fabric of its DNA.  The clinic leadership team must have an unwavering commitment to offering a concierge-level of service at every turn, and mandating its employees to do the same. 

Offering concierge-level service is thinking about the small things and asking yourself, What Can I Do To Remove The Patient’s Pain In This Moment? Examples include, but are not limited to: 

  • Using the patient’s name during conversation 

  • Having call center / new patient coordinators use the patient’s name immediately 

  • Always remaining calm and using a pleasant tone of voice

  • Providing patients with support/messages of hope during the two-week wait.

 If this belief and level of customer service is not woven into the fabric of your culture or expressed within you as a physician, it will affect how your staff treats their patients.  

2). Claim & Maintain Listings 

Once offering the concierge level of service has been addressed, the next step is to organize your listings.  Local Listings are a directory with your business's key information. When people search for your business (or the service you provide), your listing is usually displayed in the search results.  The most important listings are:

  • Google My Business (GMB)

    • Physicians should be tied to the clinic listing, but owned by the physician 

    • Each clinic location should have a listing, including satellites so reviews can be left

  • Facebook

  • Yelp

    • Yelp is important because it is also integrated with other listings sites, like Bing and Apple Maps 

  • Fertility IQ

    • Fertility IQ has skyrocketed as an influencer platform over the last few years, and the length, depth, and detail of the reviews have it becoming a recognized source of patients’ trust. 

Once Google & Facebook are at a minimum of 4.5 and 60+ reviews, begin to focus on Yelp & FertilityIQ

3). Request Reviews 

Patients will always leave reviews when left up to their own devices, but if you want to achieve and maintain a rating of 4.5 and above, you need to be proactive about asking and automating review requests.  

Asking 

When you’ve treated patients right, they want to help you.  Therefore, ask the right patient for a review and give yourself and your staff permission to do it.  While verbal requests are necessary, asking also includes creating marketing materials that advertise where to leave reviews and post the requests on social media.  Bottom line: Don’t be afraid to ask with the right patient!  In your waiting room, use video to ask satisfied patients to like you on Facebook, rate you on Yelp, or fill out a patient satisfaction survey.  Seek patients who give your practice high marks and ask them if they’d be willing to give you a testimonial. 

Automation 

Using a service that automates repeat requests to reviews and pushes them to the four most important platforms in Reproductive Medicine (Google, Facebook, Yelp, FertilityIQ).  The software element helps ensure the patient is reminded and the review is pushed to the platform where you need it most.

4). Manage Reviews 

It’s critical to respond to 100% of reviews - both positive and negative.  While it’s also helpful to have a foundation of scripts to utilize so that responding on every platform is not tedious, slight customization is necessary to ensure the consumer’s needs are being addressed.  Something as simple as “Thank you for your feedback. We’re committed to a better patient experience and are in the process of reevaluating all staff communication” will show the patient you take their feedback seriously.  And to the prospective patient who hasn’t yet chosen your practice, it lessens the harshness of the review.

5). Market Reviews 

You’re collecting the reviews, now it’s critical to share the positive patient feedback with other prospective patients still in the decision-making phases.  Our internal data shows that at least 50% of patients will conduct an online search of the clinic, often landing on your website, to evaluate a practice.  Highlight positive reviews and testimonials right on your home page so they aren’t missed. And if your center does not have amazing, professional patient testimonials that blow folks away, it’s time to get that changed right now by consulting with the creative team at Fertility Bridge.  

By taking charge of your online reputation, you will impact the number of new patient appointments, retrievals and ultimately, revenue.  

If you’d like Fertility Bridge’s help in improving your online reputation, we can assess your situation in the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic.

128: Meet ma(+)e fertility the Uber of IVF with Gabriel Bogner

On this week of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones is joined by Gabriel Bogner, co-founder of Mate Fertility—a leading disrupter in the IVF space.

Did you know—nearly 20% of the time, it takes more than two people to make a baby? And yet, only 1.7% of those dealing with infertility seek or receive the treatment they need. Gabriel and his team of fertility doctors believe the best science should be available to the most people. And at ma(t)e fertility, they’re working to make this possible.

Listen to the full episode to learn:

-How Mate Fertility is disrupting the IVF space with affordable, accessible IVF treatments

-How traditional OB-GYNs can get set-up with a Mate Fertility clinic in less than 6 months

-And what the future of Mate looks like for both IVF patients and clinic owners


Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.

Gabriel Bogner: 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielbogner/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matefertility/

Interested in adding IVF to your clinical services? Mate Fertility can help with that. https://matefertility.com/how-it-works/


Transcript

[00:00:53] Griffin Jones: Can non REI, OB GYN provide adequate fertility services, including IVF to the bulk of the infertility population. Right now we talk about that in today's episode, today's shout out is going to go to Lori Whalen, a nurse that many of you know, who's been on the show before and who also connected us for this topic.

So thanks to Laurie. Hope to see you soon and shout out to you. On today's episode, I've got Gabriel Bogner. He comes from the tech space. He comes from the venture space and is building a model in mate fertility that hopes to work with OB GYN in underserved markets to provide. IVF at a quality scale that is much more accessible because it's in these markets that are underserved and either consequently or subsequently more affordable.

So we talk about the inaccessibility in the marketplace as a whole, we talk about Gab personal journey of how he got to. This world, we talk about VC funding and Gabriel. He walks people through. For those of you that are still kind of fuzzy on the difference between private equity and venture. Gab does a good job of sharing what mate has done this far and what they're doing next.

And so I really hope that you enjoy this. I'm not the person that's qualified to say which models work and which ones won't. But I do see the need in the marketplace. I'm glad that that people have are going for it and I will be interested to follow up on the progress. So please enjoy this episode about male fertility with Gabriel Bogner.

Mr. Bogner Gab welcome to Inside Reproductive Health. 

[00:02:51] Gabriel Bogner: Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited to be here, chatting with you all about a mate fertility. 

[00:02:58] Griffin Jones: You made some splashes when you came into the marketplace a couple of years ago, and I'm interested in hearing about that. I want to get your story and why you decided to found this group, but I want maybe start with, tell us about the model of may and what makes it different. And then I'm going to start asking you why and about your story. 

Yeah, definitely. So mate fertility is a really unique business model in the fertility space. And we really focus on three core tenants, which are affordability, accessibility, and quality of care.

And before I kind of dive into what the model is, I'll previsit by saying about eight to 10 years ago. If somebody told you to get in the back of a stranger's car and have them drive you somewhere, you would say you're absolutely crazy. I'm never going to do that and now it's the norm. We do it every single day with Uber.

If somebody told you to go and stay in a stranger's house six years ago, you'd say, I'm not doing that either and now we do it all the time with Airbnb. So it takes a little bit of disruption and uncomfortability to really push the boundary and create new disruptive businesses. And I like to think that's a little bit of what mate fertility is.

And so for our unique business model we're actually an MSO, which means management service organization, similar to a franchise model. And so what made fertility is, is we basically partner with really incredible high quality OB-GYNs in traditionally underserved fertility markets. So we're not going after LA New York, San Francisco, we're going after the cities that are often forgotten about don't get a lot of access.

Don't get a lot of high quality care and we partner with an enable OB GYN in those kinds of secondary and tertiary markets to open a mate fertility clinic and offer full service IVF, fertility care, surrogacy, egg, egg donors, PG TA the whole nine yards. 

So you're a good fit on this show then, because one of the things that we talk about a lot is REI as being the bottleneck to care.

And I'm not qualified to say to what degree the bottleneck should be applied and shouldn't, but we have far more people that need fertility treatment than there are people to treat them at the moment. There's only 1100 REIs in the U S maybe a hundred or so in Canada. And so we're far under serving the populations that need to be served.

You've taken your MSO to work with OB GYN and these underserved markets. And that's another thing that every other show gave, I talk about how there's 44 fellows graduating each year. And they, it seems to me like 80% of them are going to 20 cities or fewer. And it's not, it's not, you know, in general w with obviously exception, but in general, it's not this smaller middle-market interior of the country cities. 

[00:06:06] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, exactly. I mean, and you hit the nail on the head there there's about 420 to 450 IVF clinics in the entire United States. The vast majority of those IVF clinics are located in top five, top 10 Metro areas with the rates of infertility just dramatically increasing over the past couple of decades, I mean men sperm counts have plummeted over the past 50 years. Women are having kids later on. My couples are having kids later in life. Women are wanting to freeze their eggs. All of this has just led to this dramatic and drastic increase in demand for these services. I mean, approximately 20% of people nowadays are diagnosed with some type of infertility.

That number is even higher when you factor in the LGBTQ community, as well as people who are. you know trying to Basically get out of the genetic diseases in their family. And, you know, some estimate that number to be as high as 30%. And there's just been zero shift in the supply curve. And unfortunately when market economics comes into play and you have a lot of demand and you have not a lot of supply.

You get price gouging and you get prices that are just continually hyped up to ridiculous amounts. And unfortunately the people that are left to pay the price are the patients. 

[00:07:23] Griffin Jones: So, how do you interact with OB GYN in this model or utilize OB GYN who are not board certified REIS in this model, because some, our eyes might be listening thing.

There's no way that they can do what we do. Other people are listening and saying, you know, we've started to do this because we need, and by this, I mean, utilize OB GYN or utilized APPS so talk to us more about how do you utilize OB GYN. 

[00:07:51] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, well, I don't want to give away all the trade secrets, but I mean OB-GYNs are very skilled doctors and providers, right.

And of course, going through an REI fellowship and being a reproductive endocrinology is extremely well-respected field. And, you know, at the end of the day, we're not trying to, we don't want to step on anybody's toes. You know, we see a world where we work together harmoniously and we're not trying to really tackle the super complicated cases, you know, we like to really go with the running the male infertility cases. And you know, we'd love to work with REI is to take some of the workload off of them. And some of the more simpler, straightforward IVF cases, you know, might say, go to a mate clinic where some of the more complicated cases go to REI, of course, but you know, for when we're working with OB GYN we actually go into their existing clinics and we will up-skill and train them to do IVF and egg retrievals and transfers.

We will actually build them an IVF lab from the ground up in their existing clinics. So. It's almost like a clinic within a clinic. A comparison that I like to make is if you've ever been to a PetSmart and you've seen the Banfield pet hospitals that are in the, the PetSmart locations, very similar where it's a clinic within an existing clinic.

And so those OB-GYNs they are opening a mate fertility clinic under their existing umbrella. They're expanding their services and you're right. We see OB GYN. Getting into this already. They're getting into vaginal rejuvenation, they're getting into liposuction, breast augmentations, varicose vein surgeries.

And so all of this has just led to these OB GYN is really searching for ancillary revenue streams. And you know, also OB GYN is really being able to take care of the whole patient because the first place a patient's going to turn when they're struggling to get pregnant as their OB GYN. And this anyways, they're not necessarily going to go to an REI the first time they struggled, they're going to go to an OB GYN. So imagine the patient experience. They go to that OB GYN that they know and trust, and they've been going through their entire life. And that OB GYN is like, yes, absolutely. I can do IVF. I can treat you all the way through. And so we train those OB-GYNs to do retrievals and transfers.

They go through a very rigorous process through the meat fertility academy. There's also a ton of hands-on training. There's a lot of didactic training. We are training their entire existing staff, but of course we want to make sure that there's quality with everything that we're doing too. And so we don't just kind of leave the OB GYN is train them and say, bye we're done.

Everything is overseen by board certified REI is on the backend. And they are the ones that are really kind of calling the shots on the stimulation management, because that's really where the complicated stuff comes in is, is this dim management and the medication management. And so REI is, are of course overseeing every single aspect of that and really calling the shots just on a virtual basis.

And we're also managing all of the IVF coordination. And so we employed the fertility nurses and they sit on the corporate team. And so there's virtual basically. IVF coordination. Very similar to how a lot of nurses do it today in the international space. 

[00:11:13] Griffin Jones: So you're not going to give away all of your trade secrets here, that's fine. That's what people aren't expecting it though sometimes they might perk up there if they're, if they're hoping that someone does, but at a, at a high level, how, how are you building labs in OB GYN offices, where. Labs have traditionally been very expensive and very involved. And we have one client that just built a brand new center.

And that was a tremendous undertaking was with building this individual's new lab. And so talk to us about what you're bringing to the, yeah, not granular, but at a high level, what is it that you're doing to be able to do that. 

[00:11:53] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, I mean, well, it's a partnership when we find people that are joining the ma(+)e fertility ecosystem.

So as much as you know, we're trying to sell them on ma(+)e fertility, they also have. to sell us And we have to really ensure that it's the right partner and it's the right location. So we do a ton of upfront work before we go into any partnerships with any OBGYN clinics, offices any other OBGYN NSS, we do a ton of up work on that specific clinic and location to make sure that we would be able to actually build a lab there.

And I think a lot of people love to over-complicate this stuff. And, you know, make it seem like it's the most involved thing in the entire world, but you know, at the end of the day, we've found tremendous partners in the equipment. We found tremendous partners for architecture and build out and we've kind of got it down to a science and we know exactly what type of size what's needed in the labs.

Like what the proper HVAC configuration is. And, you know, we just go in and yeah. And we built them. And I think a lot of people like to over-complicate things and it doesn't really need to be that complicated. I mean, we're getting brand new top of the line equipment on everything too. And you know, we did it, we, we built an IVF fully functioning IVF lab and about six months maybe less than that about five months actually I'm with all brand new state-of-the-art equipment. 

[00:13:29] Griffin Jones: And I remember someone telling me about how all of this was, was possible. If someone else work on an affordable model, not the same, but about how there's this opportunity to. It create labs much more economically and efficiently, but I'll let me play the other side for a second is I can picture someone listening and saying, hang on.

It is really complicated. It is that complicated. And you mentioned that you have your team that trains the OB GYN. They're probably thinking, well, who the heck is training these people. So talk a little bit about your team who is training these folks. 

[00:14:04] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, absolutely. So we've compiled a really tremendous team of people who have been in the space for upwards of decades.

And, it's really interesting because the beauty of our team is that we have a mixture of people who have been in the fertility space for their entire careers. And then we have a mixture of people who have. Been in the tech and the startup space. And so we both bring these very unique and interesting ideas to frankly, in an antiquated industry.

And so our provider team is made up of four REIs right now. Two of them from Stanford, one of them comes from Harvard. I'm not going to give away any names right now, just because I want to protect everybody's privacy. And then our nursing team is made up of one of our nurses, Lori Wayland, who's been in the space for 20 years. I believe she actually knows you Griffin. And then we actually just brought another nurse. Her name is Stephanie Parker. She's been in this space for about 15 years as well. And then leading up our operations is Tammy, Hickson, Keltner. Been in the fertility space for upwards of about 15 years.

And she ran operations for I believe I forgot the name that she run. HRC. She ran operations for HRC down in SoCal. So we have a really experienced and qualified team. We're not just kind of pulling people out of from the oblique, from out of the oblivion. And we're really making sure that we're partnering and we're bringing on people who understand the mission of what we're trying to do, you know, and at the end of the day, I think there's a lot of companies and maybe even companies in this space that are just trying to do it for the money or because the fertility industry is hot and there's a lot of investors coming in, but, you know, honestly, what we're really trying to do is solve the problem.

I think everybody can admit that there's a problem in this space. And that problem is that there's currently not enough treatment for the amount of demands. There's months, long waiting lists. People can get in to see doctors. And so, you know, ultimately the existing system that is in place today wasn't allowing us to do that. Wasn't allowing people who need care to get access to care. And so what we're really trying to do is increase access and solve this dramatic and huge problem that currently exists in the fertility industry. You know, and we're finding really forward thinking providers and doctors who live and see this every single day in their clinics, see people that can't afford treatment, that can't get in to see them. And they understand the need for just increased access for increased affordability. And you know, we're not, we're really not trying to. Take business away from existing practices or existing REI is, you know, I like to say, we're not trying to steal a piece of the pie.

We're actually trying to make the pie bigger because right now there's a lot of people who just aren't getting treatment.

[00:17:04] Griffin Jones: So a lot of people say that, but I do actually see you having a model that makes the pie bigger. I think it's really important to do, especially in those markets. I want to talk about how you select markets, but I want to talk about how you came to this problem.

You said you're here to solve a problem. You also mentioned there's lots of people coming into this field and many of them with lots of money because they believe that there's more. To be made here. And there is a lot of money going around here, but sometimes it's just shifting from one end to the ship, to the other as, as the waves go up and down.

Right. And I think there's some people here, there are some people that are clearly coming and adding entrepreneurial value to this space. And then there's many people that aren't and I get up in the morning every day and try not to be in the second group. I try to be in the first group.

And even if you have the purest of heart, it's not easy to provide value in business. It's a hard thing to do. We can have an entire podcast episode about that, but talk to me a little bit about why this problem, you're a businessman. You're an entrepreneur. You've been in the tech space.

You've probably seen a thousand problems and What was it about this one that made you say I want to try and tackle this? 

[00:18:16] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, well relation to the fertility industry goes all the way back to my birth because I'm actually an IVF baby. So it's very full circle getting into this industry and the space for me.

I've always been really fascinated by the fertility space and I remember very clearly. My mom told me I was an obvious baby. My parents were older when they, when they wanted to have me. And so they just struggled to get pregnant. My mom was 38 and my dad was 37 and they just couldn't get pregnant.

And so they went and they, you know, went through treatment and they ended up having me. And so I remember when my mom said that, you know, you're an IVF baby. And I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that I was really fascinated by the industry and I used to run around and tell people I was a test tube baby, and I thought it was super cool.

And as I just delve more into the space that throughout my life, I really began to understand. The intricacies of the industry and what's wrong with it and why it's so inaccessible. It's a multi-pronged reason on why I wanted to go into the space. So that's the first one. The second reason is, know, I have had a long relationship, I guess, with the US healthcare system. As I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at a pretty young age. And so I had a pretty serious case, ended up having my entire large intestine removed part of my small intestine, I have the J pouch surgery, my J pouch failed.

I actually currently have an ostomy right now. And so I understand just the difficulties of navigating the healthcare system in the United States. I understand. The frustrations that patients go through on a daily basis because I've been living it my entire life. And so I've always wanted to go into the healthcare space, but from the business side to really help and make sure that, you know, the patient experience is better than what I have.

And, you know, although the fertility industry is not Crohn's, it's all the healthcare industry at the end and it's all, you know, patient experience. And of course the patient experiences is super, super important and flawed and broken in the us healthcare system today. And then third reason is I'm also gay.

So being part of the LGBTQ community, Third party reproduction and surrogacy has always been something that's been really top of mind for me, because I've always wanted to have kids, but I never knew how it was going to be possible for me to have kids. And of course, really just understanding the space a little bit more.

You really see how inaccessible. It is for a lot of people in my community. And honestly, how discriminatory a lot of the policies are around LGBTQ fertility care. You know, I think there's a lot of amazing clinics today that have done a really tremendous job in focusing on working with the queer community.

But I think there's, you know, a ton of work to still be done. And we actually just brought on one of our providers. One of our REI is who specifically works with, you know, the LGBTQ community. And so she's really going to be helping us build, build our programming fully out just around, around helping the queer community, especially when we're going after places like Oklahoma, west, Virginia, Kansas, these, these more conservative markets where a lot of fertility clinics and a lot of hospitals are backed by religious organizations. And so, you know, receiving care as a queer individual, as a trans individual, or even as a single woman receiving fertility care at a lot of these hospital back clinics is impossible and we've seen it firsthand in Oklahoma city time and time again. 

[00:21:57] Griffin Jones: So you come into the field from, from an emotional roots of being an IVF baby, having a complicated history with the healthcare system. And being a part of the LGBTQ plus community and seeing a need for family building to be far more expansive than what it is.

How do you get from those three starting pillars to, okay, now we're starting to see a model. Like how did it come down further to like, okay, like, this is drawing me over to look into this area, but then how do you get from looking in to the reproductive health space to this is the need. How did you get there?

[00:22:38] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, well, it's actually looking out. So instead of looking into the space, it's really looking out what is the rest of the world doing? And you know, this business. A year or two years was really just like researching and understanding the space and really trying to grasp, how can we actually fix this industry?

How can we actually make a dent in the root of the problem, which is there's not enough clinics and there's not enough providers, how can we actually solve the root of the problem? And it took looking outwards to actually come to the solution. So when you look at the United States, 1% of our babies are born using art assisted reproductive treatment.

That number is incredibly low. You look outside Japan, Denmark, Israel, Australia. These countries have upwards of 10 to 15% of their babies being born using assisted reproductive treatment. And of course you ask the question. Why, like, why do all of these countries have so much more access? Why are so many more people using and turning to assisted reproductive treatment, of course, because it's a lot more affordable, but second, because OB-GYNs are actually the ones that are providing the care in these other markets. So they're the ones that are doing the retrievals and transfers. The whole REI kind of full fellowship doesn't necessarily exist in a lot of other countries.

And so OB GYN are often the ones that are doing the retrievals and doing the transfers and doing the stimulation management. And so, you know, looking at just how the rest of the world is doing it and why the United States is so far behind. It's like, why, why, why aren't we doing this here yet? 

[00:24:22] Griffin Jones: So you start from looking out, you're seeing what other places are doing, and you think you might be able to close the gap by taking some pages out of the books of other countries, then how do you start to actually. Build this because yeah, I came in as an outsider. My story is very different from most other people that did come up as an outsider. When people come in as an outsider, they're usually coming in like either as a tech entrepreneur and coming in with some kind of VC backing or they're coming from private equity.

I came as you know, I was a marketer in my twenties and I lived out my twenties traveling. And I knew that I wanted to build a firm and knew that I wanted to subspecialize. And I started working with a couple of clients in this field and decided, okay, I'm just going to dedicate to this field and it wasn't easy.

And some people do a great job at, and some people don't and sometimes it is very much like I had one physician say to me that. He no longer felt this way, but it took him a while to get over people saying our field, as opposed when it's, when it's the physician's field. At least when we're thinking of in very pure purest terms of field of medicine.

And so there's that sentiment. So how did you start to come in to this field, knowing that you're looking outside and as you said, can be insular. What was that like? 

We've been talking about things to expand care and reduce the REI bottleneck. And that always brings up Engaged MD for me. But in unlike the conversation where we're talking about using OB GYN and using other docs in other marketplaces, Engaged MD is a way to scale you to scale your team and to prepare your patients so that your patients have true informed consent so that they have true pre treatment education.

And that you're not having to repeat the same things or that your nurses who are. Over to the bone are, don't have to repeat the same things over and over and get, and instead you use Engaged MD, you reach patients ahead of time. They can watch it on their own time. They can watch it over and over again.

They actually get the module to actually get the education, to actually get the true informed consent so that your staff doesn't need to track everything down for them. And then when they meet with you, when they meet with your staff, you can answer the questions that still remain for them or the parts that they're still hung up on, that they really need your help with because they've gotten the piece that they could get from anybody.

[00:25:55] And now they can get that tailor fit care custom to them from you because you used Engaged MD. If you're not using Engaged MD already, you're in the minority because so many people are using Engaged MD because they say it's the thing that has made the biggest difference in their practice in the last several years, at least many of them have told this to me over and over again. So if you're not in that group, if you are missing out, you can get on the train by going to engagemd.com/irh. If you mentioned that you heard them on Inside Reproductive Health, or you mentioned that you heard them from Griffin Jones, we get 25% off of your implementation fee.

So that couple of bucks off is a reasonable to give you a reason to do it now, but the reason for doing it for your practice is for the improvement to the care that your patients receive, the relationship that they have with you and reducing the burden on your staff. Go to engagedmd.com/irh 

 So how did you start to come in to this field, knowing that you're looking outside and as you said, can be insular. What was that like? 

[00:28:15] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. I mean in actually like the business it was real. It was really just a matter of like for the first year or so. Just kind of going in stealth mode and understanding, okay, what is needed to actually do this?

Like. What is the training that's needed? Let's build that entire training. You know, what is the continuous management that is needed? How are we going to actually run that? What is the architecture that's needed? What is the lab look like when we're actually, you know, building it? What does, what are the specifics that go into everything?

What does every single piece of equipment that you need in a fertility whap and how do we get all of that? You know, how do we partner with lending services to make sure that we can provide these services to patients that can't necessarily afford it right out of pocket. It was really just understanding and researching and talking to people in the field for a really long time.

And then it was a matter of calling OB-GYNs around the country and trying to find OB-GYNs in the markets that we found attractive to partner with us. And, you know, there was a lot of interest in underst and actually being able to provide this type of care for their patients. And also of course the financial benefits that come along with opening a fertility clinic.

But, you know we talk to OB GYN all the time that say they're referring out 20, 30 patients a week to REI that this is something that is being talked about constantly. And so, you know, we have this initial hypothesis and then in continuing to discuss with people throughout the entire medical field though, OB GYN field, the fertility field, just really beginning to understand, like it just reinforced the hypothesis and continued to tell us that we were on the correct path and that this is something that's actually needed.

I mean, for our OB GYN, I'm giving up a massive portion of their potential revenue because they're not able to treat and take care of any fertility patients. And so, you know, finding really forward-thinking OB GYN that actually want to do this with us. You know, it wasn't as hard as we actually thought it was going to be.

And you know, that it was just a matter of signing that contract and, you know, beginning the implementation process and it wasn't without its difficulties and challenges. And a big part of that was surrounding ourselves with the best team possible. So surrounding ourselves with, you know, a mixture of people in the tech space, people in the fertility, industry, nurses, doctors, operations, people but it was really finding people who understand what the mission is. I think the mission of what we're trying to accomplish is very powerful. You know, finding embryologists. It's a draw to a lot of people in the industry who have seen, you know, this space for decades and have seen just the difficulties that a lot of patients endure. And you know, when we talk about main fertility or really.

A solution to a lot of the problems that exist. And so, you know, just being able to talk about the mission and what we're actually trying to do for the industry has been really powerful. I don't know if that fully answered your question. 

[00:31:45] Griffin Jones: It definitely did with, especially you started talking about this, the staff, and maybe that answers my REI side question definitely answered the question for OB GYN it within that answer, I could see some resistance from REI. So how did you, you said you've got four board certified REI's working for you now and in some fertility nurses, how did you, how did you reach out to them? Because not so much anymore, because everyone's so busy, but even when I first got into the field, there was this concern that OB GYN would be taking.

REI patients and people didn't want that. I think now people are a bit more open to it, but you know, when you're talking about that, like wait REI is taking 20% of OB GYN business. Well, summary summarize might be thinking that OB GYN is now taking 20% of my business. So how did you extend that olive branch or build that, make those headways into the REI is that work for you? 

[00:32:50] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. Great question. And I started my career as a sales development representative, so I was an SDR. So I was grinding. I was doing a hundred dials a day. I was doing a hundred cold emails a day. I was sending out hundreds of LinkedIn messages a day.

When you start your career, as an SDR or from the bottom, you understand what it means to get creative and how to get people on the phone and get people talking to you. And so literally it was cold outreach. It was sending messages on LinkedIn. It was utilizing people that we had connected with to make warm introduction to the best people that they know it was, you know, utilizing different drug reps, whether they're from EMD Serona to make introductions to various REI s and nurses that they had known who, you know, were looking for something new it's, you know, creating really, really good JDs that actually speak to the person, reading them and making your JD stand out.

And being able to, you know, have a really powerful JD that a lot of people actually want to apply to. I worked at LinkedIn before this, so I kind of understand like the, the recruiting space, maybe a lot more deeply than, than other people will do and how to, you know, send really powerful messages and get people on the phone.

And so that's really what we did. It was just a grind and, you know, once we were able to talk to REI, is that understood the mission? We didn't get, we didn't get pushed back in the way that we thought we were going to. I'm sure we will in the future. And I'm sure a lot of it is yet to come.

But you know, we were very specific or very intentional about who we were reaching out to and who we wanted to connect with. And, you know, once we got those people on the phone, it was just explaining to them what we're trying to do and how we're trying to, to build a better future for the fertility industry and for the patients.

[00:34:43] Griffin Jones: I can appreciate the sweat equity of sales outreach, or cold outreach. I started my career in radio ad sales. So that was the first five years ago, early twenties and mid twenties have a real job. And it was here's the phone book kid, like, and really intense yeah, really high levels of rejection.

But one thing that it taught me was just how to get people's attention and I forget the, what was the acronym you used for the sales rep position that you started? 

[00:35:12] Gabriel Bogner: SDR, sales development representative.

[00:35:14] Griffin Jones: Sales development representative. Okay. So you mentioned that you mentioned LinkedIn, tell us more about your history.

Like how did you get to be an entrepreneur of this company that bridges tech and fertility people are thinking like, who is this guy? So what were the other things that brought you on this career path? 

[00:35:33] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah I went to UC Berkeley, got my business degree. You know, always wanted to go into the medical space.

So I don't think it was a surprise for a lot of people when, I jumped into the medical field. I really wanted to go to a big company before. Went into the start-up space. I always knew I wanted to go into the startup space. I always knew I wanted to start my own company, except I wanted to get an understanding of what it's like to work at a big company before.

And so, you know, joining a company like LinkedIn, doing a rotational program, there really understood what it's like to build a company that has an incredible mission and has a really, really terrific culture like what it means to make people want to come to work every day. You know, what it means to build really incredible cultural tenants, what it means to be a really effective manager, how to effectively manage people, how to effectively have conversations, how to communicate with people, how to sell people on things.

You know, I learned all of this, just working at a different type of working at a tech company. And then you know, just made the jump into, into doing this and it was a lot of connecting with venture capitalists and, you know, VC we're backed by VC money. And so, you know, finding the right angel investors and venture capitalists who believed in this space as well and believed in what we were doing.

But, you know, I'm the first to admit that I don't know everything and you know, maybe I am a little, a little green in the sense that I am on. I am on the younger side except, you know, No one to step aside and let the people who have been doing this for decades and the professionals really take over.

But I can tell you, one thing is that I'm passionate about the space and I am hardworking and I want to make sure that. Patients to come in all aspects of healthcare, have a better experience than, than I did. And to really build a better future. I'm always been interested in like the nonprofit space as well.

So really wanting to build a company that has a really tremendous vision. And you know, I'm not the CEO of may fertility right now we have an incredible CEO. So I'm not the one that's running the day-to-day and calling all the shots. And, you know, I helped build this thing. I understand when it's time to, to bring in professionals and people who have been in this industry for decades to handle a lot of the intricacies that, but I am just not prepared you or haven't done in the past. And that's not to say that I'm not sitting and learning and taking in everything as the other people around me are doing these really complicated things. But you know, I want to make sure. At the same time as I am a leader, I'm also a sponge and I'm also a follower to bringing these people together who know that there's an issue and there's a problem.

And making sure that we kind of have this guiding light into what, what needs to be done, but the actual, how, and the actual specifics and what, you know I'm not the one who's doing the really difficult kind of fertility, heavy lift. 

[00:38:40] Griffin Jones: So talk about how you raised money for this venture, because some of our audience, it comes not just from a financial background, but from a financier background, they're either data to work for VC funds or they're at PE firms. And, but many of our audience are practice owners and most of our audience is practice owners and many of, or younger docs, people coming out of fellowship. And many of them use private equity and venture capital. Interchangeably and they're used to, they're more used to private equity or many of them are because that's mostly who's buying practices that's established money coming in, buying an established business hoping to improve either profitability or efficiency or both, and then sell it at a profit a few years down the line venture being something different. So talk about talk about your background or mates history.

[00:39:39] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, definitely. Venture is different than private equity. Venture fuels innovation. So if you think about the companies that exist today, we wouldn't have some of the largest and most impressive companies in the world. If it weren't for venture capital money, we wouldn't have Netflix. We wouldn't have Google.

We wouldn't have LinkedIn. We wouldn't have Airbnb. We wouldn't have Uber. We wouldn't have Lyft. We wouldn't have. Pretty much any company that is in your phone today or that you use on a regular basis nowadays, we would not have without venture capital money. And so venture capital basically fuels innovators and fuels people with really great ideas without necessarily having to have a profit from day one.

So they're almost like the engine that starts something. And then. You will often people who don't have their own money or they don't have the resources to do it on their own. And you know, we found a it's it's a lot of just networking. Honestly. It's a lot of reaching out. It's a lot of pitching. It's getting it's literally saying the same pitch over and over again, day after day probably hundreds of times to get 10 people to move on to the next round. You eventually get one, yes, because you know, in a room full of nos, all you need is one, yes. And you know, we were lucky enough to get that yes from a venture capital firm that specifically specializes in seed seed stage companies called strep capitals.

You know, there's different levels. There's the angel round, which is usually smaller from friends and family. And then there's a seed round, which is the very beginning of your business where you're really trying to prove out product market fit. You're really trying to hire the best team.

And you're really trying to show kind of proof of concept down the line. And then there's series A series B series C and eventually there's going public getting bought There's a bunch of different exit options, but, you know, as venture capitalists come in, they are kind of taking a piece of the, the fertility pie, I guess, depending on what route they come in.

So obviously if you're coming in earlier, if you're coming in at a seed stage or a series A they're kind of getting more bang for their buck because it's riskier basically. So a venture capital firm that's investing in a serious. The company, they're not getting as much equity because that business as well established, and it's not as much of a risk.

And so, you know, we found risk-takers and a lot of people have said that it is the most innovative business model that they have heard either ever or in the healthcare space. And so that's what really is getting people interested. And then it's just really proving out what we've been able to do thus far and, you know, utilizing the existing relationships that we've made and, you know, utilizing the existing cause usually there's a lead investor and then there's follow on investors.

So somebody will write one bigger check and then that's kind of. The sign to other investors that might be interested that, okay, this is actually legitimate. I'll put in a little bit of money and then it's utilizing those investors to really. Honestly help you and to be that sounding board throughout your growing pains and growing experiences, and then use that existing network that you've cultivated to raise your next round of funding.

[00:43:08] Griffin Jones: So you did your angel round a cup, you close that out a couple. 

[00:43:12] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah so, we've done an angel round. We did a seed round and then we did basically a CB or like a bridge round. And we are going out to raise our series a actually in the next. Hopefully month or so, we're gonna kick off what they call the road show. 

[00:43:31] Griffin Jones: Lucky. 

[00:43:32] Gabriel Bogner: Yes, very excited,

[00:43:35] Griffin Jones: Well, that's a grind, so I wish you the best with that part of it. How about the marketplace is first off, you know, well, you gave us a general criteria of the markets underserved. But why specifically, why did Oklahoma city become the first? 

[00:43:50] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. So Oklahoma city is a fascinating market.

There's a Metro population of 1.6 million people. It is one of the fastest growing cities in terms of millennial population growth. In addition to the LGBTQ community the population of the queer community there is rapidly increasing as well. You look at income it's not super high, but it's also not on the, on the complete, lower end of the spectrum.

And we built a kind of proprietary market analysis rubric where we basically have a bunch of different criteria that we put into a spreadsheet and it spits out a grade for us. And, you know, we go after the markets that score, so it's a matter of looking out what are the existing competitors?

What are their ad spends? Are they spending money on ads? Are they doing Google, Google keywords? What is their SEO? Like? What is their other marketing? Like, what are their prices? What's the wait list? All of this has kind of a value on the backend. What's the population growth? There's a ton that goes into it.

And then we get a value out on the other side and we have a really top down approach. So any markets rank in a, for us then we're going after. And we're, list-building specific OB-GYNs, OB GYN aggregators hospital systems. And then we're cold calling. 

[00:45:07] Griffin Jones: When should we expect to see you in other markets? 

[00:45:09] Gabriel Bogner: I would say by 2020. 

[00:45:13] Griffin Jones: So this year. And so talk to us a little bit more about, of just what else you want to see accomplish. What are you paying attention to right now? 

[00:45:24] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. I think there's a lot of tech to be made in the fertility space.

And so we have a very unique approach, whereas a lot of venture capitalists, you think, oh, they're tech investors or, and a lot of them are unfortunately eliminated a lot of venture capitalists for us, but we're taking approach where let's really get the foundation of our business model.

Let's really make a dent in the market. And then let's build technology around that. Let's build technology around what we see as the need. We're already seeing the EMR space. You know, there's a ton of tech that that could be facilitated from, from that lens. And so, you know, we're, we are always keeping an eye out and kind of making a mental note of what type of technology needs to be built in the space to just facilitate a better patient experience you know, especially services around mental health too, I think is something that we're going to be super interested in. People going through are diagnosed within fertility is that embarrassing that people make is to oncology. It's the same as getting diagnosed with cancer, though, the rates of depression and the rates of anxiety that people experienced.

And there's not enough mental health resources around infertility it's, it's still very taboo. So, you know, breaking down a lot of those barriers and just education for the greater community and the greater public, I think. All the ton of companies out there kind body modern fertility that I've done a really terrific job in educating the population and educating the public about infertility.

And it's a common diagnosis. It's not as scary as you think it is. There are treatments, there are options. These companies have done a really terrific job in cultivating that type of brand and that type of not type of, you know, just information giving and, and we hope to, to do the same to just break down some of those barriers, especially when we're getting into some of the more underserved markets education there is lacking. And then, you know, what we'd love to do is just get to a point where the supply and the demand curve are, are equal, you know, as, as the demand is increasing, the supply should be increasing to you know, we also see a world where we have a mate fertility kind of academy is dotted around the United States where, you know, not only are mate fertility employees going there. Other fertility clinics are sending their nurses there or sending you their, even their doctors or their NPS to just get standard training. Because, you know, as everybody knows in the fertility space, there's a lack of standardization as well from clinic to clinic, could be getting something different.

And so, you know, there's a best practice that people should be following. And so, you know, creating centers of excellence around the United States to just facilitate an all around better standardization of care for everyone. 

[00:48:10] Griffin Jones: What about the idea that, you know, the bottlenecks being REI, but what about the idea of just moving the bottleneck one wrong, further down the bottle that many people would say, well, BG LANs are swamped too.

So are we kicking? This can down three feet and, and if not, why do you think not?

[00:48:36] Gabriel Bogner: I think it's really simple because there's 1000 REIs in the United States and there's 30,000 OB-GYNs. So, you know, it might be kicking it down the wrong, but it's better than what we currently have.

[00:48:51] Griffin Jones: When you were talking about market size and I noticed in the show notes that you had sent over 90 total, correct me if I'm paraphrasing, but 90% of the centers are, or 80% of the centers are in the top 10 metro is that right?

[00:49:09] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. I mean, so LA New York, San Francisco, Chicago, all these big metropolitan cities, there's an insane amount of clinics in these cities.

And there doesn't need to be any more clinics in these big cities. And, you know, that's why I don't think a lot of people, I guess, listening or see us as competition, really, because we're not trying to go after the cities where there are a ton of fertility clinics, we're not trying to steal market share away from any of these existing clinics.

We're really trying to go after areas where there's, there's just nothing or there's very, very few options and those options aren't great. And so we're really focusing on markets where care does not exist. Places like Alaska, you know, there's not a single IVF center in Alaska. And so that's the market that really gets us excited. That's the market where we want to be. 

[00:50:04] Griffin Jones: You have plans to go to Canada, because as I'm thinking, Canada might have an even worse concentration problem than we do, that probably more than half of the centers are in the GTA or maybe 60% or so of the centers are in Southern Ontario. If you extend Toronto out, maybe like two hours further and there's some provinces that have none.

 Any roadmap for our Canadian listeners? Have you planning on going up there? 

[00:50:31] Gabriel Bogner: Not at the moment, but I absolutely see a world where this goes international a hundred percent. 

[00:50:37] Griffin Jones: Gab how would you want to conclude? Like I said, most of our audience is practice owners, but some are embryologists that might want to come work for you.

Some might be investors that are, it was ears are perking up. Others might be docs that are kind of interested. How would you want to conclude with a mate's vision and what you want to see happen in the market place? 

[00:50:56] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, I mean, what we really are aiming to do is create a better world, honestly, and create a better world in the fertility space.

I'm sure there's a lot of companies in the space right now that are solving one issue that exists and yes, that issue needs attention. But at the end of the day, it's not solving the root of the problem, which everybody knows exists. There's not enough providers. There's not enough clinics for the amount of care that is demanded in the United States.

And so what we're really trying to do here is actually make a day. In that huge problem by, you know, opening clinics in traditionally underserved markets by having care that is significantly more affordable than some of the legacy clinics and really standardizing and having high quality care at every single corner, by making sure that, you know, we're controlling a lot of those, a lot of those touch points you know, and if you are interested in and you want to learn more about what it's like to, to come join mate fertility then, you know, I definitely recommend reaching out to myself or, you know, just visiting our website. Should I get my email? 

[00:52:10] Griffin Jones: You can give a plug if you want. Yeah. As long as you're not worried about Russian hackers spidering the internet.

[00:52:18] Gabriel Bogner: Maybe I won't give it, but you can find me.

[00:52:20] Griffin Jones: Or people can contact me and I will be happy to put them in touch with you if they don't, if they don't connect with you on Linkedin. 

[00:52:26] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, definitely. 

I'm active on LinkedIn or you can reach out to Griffin, but you know, we're just trying to just solve a problem that we know exists. And we're hoping that a lot of people see and understand what we're trying to do and support us in doing that.

[00:52:39] Griffin Jones: I wish you the best of luck, Gab Bogner. Thank you so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health. 

[00:52:43]Gabriel Bogner: Thank you so much for having me.

127: Leadership vs. Delegation in Marketing

On this week of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones shines a light on what responsibilities should be handled by the principal of an organization and what should be delegated. This is something that all business owners struggle with but is especially unique in the fertility industry due to the nature of being a doctor and a business owner. 


Listen to the full episode to understand: 

  • What roles should principals not delegate.

  • How involved should the integrator role be in the core operations.

  • What do the best brands have in common. 

  • When to do a brand refresh

For all the details and visuals go to our blog

126: Increasing REI Productivity with Balance with Dr. Kutluk Oktay

Dr. Kutluk Oktay on Inside Reproductive Health

This week on Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones and Dr. Kutluk Oktay go down the rabbit hole on the meaning of work-life balance. They discuss Dr. Oktay’s approach to limiting his patient load to spend more time on research and how that affects his motivation and quality of life. This conversation culminates in tips on how to be more productive and comments on developing leaders in your organization so you can get the balance you deserve. 

Listen to the full episode to hear our perspective on: 

  • How to fill your schedule

  • What makes good leadership

  • How does social media fit into ‘self-care’

  • How to approach work-life balance

Dr. Kutluk’s Information: 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kutluk-oktay-md-phd-909b656a

Website: https://www.fertilitypreservation.org/


Sponsored by: 


Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.

Mentioned in the Episode: 

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz: https://profitfirstbook.com/

Need help attracting the right people to make your practice great? Connect with us at fertilitybridge.com


Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I always think that our colleagues thought they were doing the best 25 years ago, but we look at what they've done.

We kind of roll our eyes, right, if we thought that it was today. So I always imagined myself looking at myself 20 years from now.

 

[00:01:01] Griffin Jones: The episode, I just recorded one a little bit differently than I thought it was going to go. I thought it was going to be about pursuing a career track in academic medicine. And it's a bit of that, but it talk more about what it means to have a meaningful and well-balanced career. My guest for today was Dr. Kutluk Oktay. He's at Yale. He's a professor of OB GYN and reproductive sciences. There is the director of the laboratory of fertility. The preservation and molecular reproduction there, he has published over 200 manuscripts and book chapters. His research has been funded by the NIH for almost 20 years.

And we talk about what it means to have a meaningful career for someone. Not that there's one path for anyone, but giving the listener an idea of what it's like to balance this and how you incorporate different interests, not just in the work part, but all of the things that happen when you're not working, you know, like your family, your health, your fitness, your hobbies, if you have those.

And that's what this episode explores in a way that's a bit more meaningful than just talking about self-care as a platitude, which I can't stand. And then talk a little bit about that in the conversation, but I'll let you decide. So I hope you enjoy.

Dr. Kutluk Oktay, welcome to Inside Reproductive Health. 

[00:02:22] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:25] Griffin Jones: I'm interested in the topic that you and I were snowballing, the idea that you had about the ability to have it all as an REI practitioner and specifically with regard to working in an academic setting.

And so before we go into how one is able to have it all, I believe that that the topic you had phrased as was having your cake and eating it too. So let's start before we talk about how to eat the cake, tell us what the cake looks like. 

[00:02:59] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I'm not sure if there's a cake in this instance, but well, cake is I think hobby, the first trick is that, you know, you need to love what you're doing and if you're doing what you're doing as a job, you know, it's not a cake, right? So it's a cake because it tastes good, then you enjoy it. But even having too much of your favorite food would not be good for you even eventually get sick and tired of it.

So I think to me, cake is what you love doing. And the cake is one that's made with balanced ingredients and not one flavor's overpowering the others and a healthy cake a healthy cake. So you have to bake your own cake. You have to come up with your own recipe. If you have the wrong recipe for your cake you know, you may so soon throw up everything you had eaten so the speak.

[00:03:55] Griffin Jones: We talked about a balance of ingredients. What are some of those ingredients look like? 

[00:04:00] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Well, you know, a little bit of flour and I'm just getting. 

[00:04:03] Griffin Jones: That's a different show. That's Inside Reproductive cooking. 

[00:04:07] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I know I just want to make stuff, you know. During the time of COVID we are always disoriented and the wrong show. Okay. Because I do some cooking and that's part of the ingredients, right.

You need to balance your life as much as your work life. And you, we cannot be a single channel or a single ingredient cake. You know, if you just made it the flour, no sugar who's going to eat that cake. Number one is to have their idea of ingredients and not to build on one ingredients.

So maybe if you want to start diverging from the cooking analogy right. In my case, I'm curious, right, because I'm both a scientist and clinician, and I always question, I always question and say, there must be a better way of doing this. And I always think that our colleagues thought they were doing the best 25 years ago, but we look at what they've done.

We kind of roll our eyes, right, if we thought that it was today. So I always imagined myself looking at myself 20 years from now. And first of all, try to always improve things. And so that kind of makes it fun because to me, nothing is routine. Everything is a challenge, the challenge to do better, do better for your patients and do better for the field.

 Never stagnate. And so the ingredients for that reason is of course it's a good patient care, but innovation and always asking, you know, what can I do? What question can I ask? And how do I study that to take this current approach to the next level? 

[00:05:59] Griffin Jones: When you talk about a balance in work life, do you mean balancing life within work with life outside of work, you know, family and hobby balance?

Or do you mean balancing what you do within work? 

[00:06:14] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Right. So in your life different index funds. One is the work index funds that you want to track the optimum rate of increase in your quality with balancing components of your work. And then you have your family life. Then you have your hobbies and then you have, you know, another balancing there.

And then together you balance all of these together. So you have balancing the compartments, but then you are so the life balance. So when I say work life, not work life, but your life at work. I'm talking about, I personally, if I just saw patients seven days a week, I would probably burn out in two weeks.

And because that's not how my brain functions. Right. And as I said, that, pausing and asking questions, how can I do better? And if you just constantly see patients, you cannot pause and ask that question. So for me action versus introspection in our case, introspection is we could say research because research is introspection to me, you know, asking questions about what you're doing, whether it's right or not.

And how can I just like, how can I be a better person? So for me, there has to be a balance between actually seeing patients doing surgery, administration research teaching, and doing yoga and during your breaks, whatever. If you're doing that to work you have to find the right balance for yourself.

You might be a warrior you know you see patients, seven days a week, I admire you. But I don't have that skill. I personally my approach is I focus on one patient at a time and I put a lot of energy and time in one case. And I probably can do, I don't know, certain number of cases like that in a given time.

And then I turned my energy to more academic questions who would, which would, I answered correctly, benefit those patients or the patients in the next generation. So I have to balance the work like that. And then, and then leave time for things that make you relax outside of the work and that's going to be different for everybody.

But to me family is important. Hobbies are very important, exercise, you know, well, if I don't exercise properly, I could be staring at my screen for five hours and producing nothing. But sometimes you take part in a health to hit that, you know, hard tennis session. And when you come back in three hours, you do work that you would normally do in three days in two to three hours.

So, I mean, time is a very expandable thing. Reality, we think five hours equals five hours. Now, you know, five hours could be 72 hours, or it could be three minutes depending on your mindset productivity energy level. So you have to do things to expand those three hours. Again, to buy your times for other things.

[00:09:22] Griffin Jones: So let's see how many different metaphors we can use on today's episode. I like the index fund. Let's stick with that because you have your total resource allocation in your portfolio. In this case portfolio is the total amount of time and you have a number of different index funds within that portfolio and then with in at specific index fund, you have allocations of shares to different different companies in one index under, or perhaps even across different fields. So let's stick with the work index fund and then we'll, and then we'll move on to the rest of the portfolio. You talked about saying, you know, seeing patients every day, you would burn out within two weeks.

So research helps you be introspective at all. Teaching helps you to improve. Why do you feel that the academic route has been best for you in, in, in serving those different areas? 

[00:10:23] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Right? I think I have to think about, you know, an artist. Right. You know, why did being a you know, impressionist help me kind of why, you know it's just, I think part of it is you have certain tendencies, 

[00:10:35] Griffin Jones: Let me rephrase that because rather you have your tendencies, why do you feel that working at Yale was more accommodating to your tendencies than maybe if you had gone and worked for a private practice or a network, or maybe if you'd gone somewhere else in the country, why do you feel that working at an academic division suited your tendency better?

[00:10:56] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I'm not necessarily advocating for or against any company or any setup or private practice and all that. I think you could have a private setting but you could affiliate yourself with an academic Institute and you could still follow by the same index fund so for me. 

[00:11:13] Griffin Jones: Would it be the exact same index fund though?

Or would it be like Fidelity's version of what Vanguard did? Well, you know, it's pretty much the same thing, but the expense ratio is different and there might be some fees that I don't know about. And can you do it the same way? 

[00:11:30] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I dunno. Yeah, you're right. Their management fees could be different.

And so I, maybe there are different, you know, they may not be as broad based. But I think the key is to think creatively. I think we see examples of these major private enterprises. You know, turning starting fellowships doing you know, academic investments with their private money, et cetera.

So within that, somebody who's interested in boats can also find home. So it's not necessarily, you know, Yale versus some major and right for the private practice, but I think the formula, so in the end, yes, you are right. That not every enterprise would be accommodating right. To somebody who wants to spend time on research.

So first of all, you have to find that study for yourself. But second thing is you may have to create that same for yourself. And you know, if you're attracting research funding one more or the other, or you have some you know, you have some charity or something that's you can attract money and other different ways than you can set up your lab, even in a major commercial enterprise nevertheless in academics it's easier, but it used to be easier. Let's say because academic centers are also facing a lot of financial pressures. So I don't think there's one perfect solution in that sense.

[00:12:53] Griffin Jones: Why do you say used to be easier?

[00:12:56] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Well, I think if you listen to people for before us and when NIH funding rate was something like 50%, every other grant submitted would be funded and the universities received a lot more government funding, state funding, they had more money to throw around for research and free up there faculty. So those resources have been over time restricted. So with the managed care managed care squeeze as well. So a lot of academic centers you know, they're pushing their faculty to work, you know, similar hours to sometimes, you know, privates centers. And I think in our field it has become a problem and a lot of good any centers have lost their REI divisions and because financially it didn't make sense to a lot of them.

 Must create it Yale in one sense that Yale department of OB GYN and reproductive sciences as always being a pro translational research always support it clinicians with scientific interests and always created time as much as possible or supported them so that they can get funding.

So there's still departments like that somehow, but not as mad as many of those. So I'm lucky to be where I am right now. 

[00:14:16] Griffin Jones: Yeah. Well that changes things for the people that go into work for those places. Don't they, if what they wanted out of an REI division was to spend perhaps less clinical office hours, more research hours if they are starting to see more of the push that, well, we need you at this clinical capacity, no matter what do they lose some of their recruiting edge? 

[00:14:45] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I think so. I think academic centers especially at the more advanced level you know, junior colleagues, they still, I think are attracted academic centers because they need to pass their boards. Maybe build a little bit of name for themselves, but I think there's a difficulty in recruiting, more senior people and and losing a junior people when eventually they have acquired, you know, certain credentials and skills.

So yes, I think there's a brain drain in academia, especially in our specialty. You know, there are still mechanisms of supporting these like your productive scientist development program wore her, like Yale has this. So we have number of faculty who are on these tracks with protected time.

 And then we see that there are some, you know, rising stars because of that. You had one of our colleagues on your show and there is still opportunities, but you know, if you compare, academia in terms of salaries to a private practice you know, we are all aware of the differences but, you know, I think the medicine, or especially our subspecialty is not something that you want to pursue because you're only interested in the financial aspects.

I think in that case risk benefit ratio is not that great. You really have to love that the path you have chosen. So as I say, somebody who's likes to do a lot of introspection through research will not be happy in that continuous flow of academic clinical practice. 

[00:16:16] Griffin Jones: What advice would you give?

Because a lot of the people that listen to this show are fellows, and some of them might even want to come work for you. So the advice you give could be used against you, you got to remember that, but people are listening across the country. And in other places too, for that matter. And so what, what advice would you give them to investigate if the program they're interested in potentially working for really does meet. What they want in terms of research in terms of protected faculty time, or if it's just kind of a smoke screen, for lack of a better word though. I'd certainly don't mean to say it's so sinister for you're just going to be a workhorse clinician, like you would anywhere else.

What advice would you give fellows for sniffing that out as they determine what program they want to work for? 

[00:17:11] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: So going back to financial and knowledge, I would say invest early, you know, start putting in your 401k. Well, they were early, right? I think that should start when your residents, because if you are number one, you think you are interested in research.

I usually don't like to use term research to speak on cliche whether what it means, I mean so that's why I used introspection analogy, but you're more introspective, inquisitive. You want to approach more creative side of what we do. I mean, clinical creation is also important.

I think I have to start as a resident, maybe even a medical student building that those research skills. And so that, you know, when you hit fellowship, you are maybe a few steps ahead and you can do things and enduring fellowship that could prepare you to be more competitive for an academic job, which would enable you to, you know, get funding early.

And once you secure some funding, then you have more support from these institutions to have more time. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, like you start with know to write, to propose, to think eventually you're not going to produce anything. So you have to preempt, I would say, you know, just decide on your career path, not first year of fellowship book.

Oh boy. Maybe when medical school or first year of residency and build those skills and portfolio. If you're interested in clinical research, start working with somebody to build have publications and understand the skills. If you're interested in basic research, same thing and hit the ground running.

And so that's number one. Number two is, you know, there may not be a lot of academic jobs that you can negotiate necessarily about. If the other alternative is working for an academic center and like working for a private practice, but every reduced salary, you may. If they give me this I'll work for academics.

If they don't, then I'll just stick with private practice. I think they need to have a good negotiation. Maybe allow them themselves three years of maybe protected research time in which time they can apply for various mechanisms for junior faculties. As I said, there's a productive scientist development program.

There's the Warhol from NIH and there could be other mechanisms. Most likely they get that on board and then they can build on that. Then start getting, you know, bigger grants, et cetera, if that's what they're interested in. So that would be my general guidance. 

[00:19:51] Griffin Jones: So that negotiation happens for the employment agreement.

This is the amount of protected time. You have this when you're negotiating the employment agreement? 

[00:20:01] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Right, I mean, you know, some institutions are like, Very rigid, right. And say, okay, you're coming as an assistant professor, unless you get a grant, we'll give you, or, you know, .5 FTE for you to do whatever you want with that time.

Some institutions are more rigid. Some institutions maybe looking for they're missing that we've been talking about portfolios, et cetera. Maybe now let's go more towards smaller. I mean, building a department is like building a national soccer team, you know, like you have to put the people with different skills in different positions to lead, and maybe they have a lot of strong clinicians, but they need somebody who's promising who's going to move the field.

So if you can show them the portfolio like you've done in your residency, you published three key papers. It shows that you are a promising person. Okay. Going back to the investment. So this is a low risk investment for us looks like, but he or she has done during residency. Imagine if you give her time during as an attending faculty, what she could do.

I mean, it's going to depend on the job, but if you have already built some portfolio, it will be easier for you to negotiate.

[00:21:13] Griffin Jones: Okay. So let's move on to a couple of the other index funds in our portfolio. We've talked about what would the actual work-life the allocation of work.

Let's talk about the rest of the allocation of life. You could family as its own index fund. Hobbies would be its own index fund. Health and fitness would probably be its own index fund. And so of those other three things, which, which do you find sharpens the saw most for you? And by that, I mean, gets you back.

You mentioned if you play around a tennis that you can be exceptionally productive afterwards. So which do you find reenergizes you the most quickly?

[00:21:59] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I don't think anyone matters individually because in the end this is the total amount of assets you retire with. Right. So I don't care which one built that fund.

I think it, again, it's balanced and it's also depends on the day. Right. But you know, I can have the same pleasure as going, picking up my daughter from school, let's say, during the lunchtime and bring her home and chatting whatever, as a you know playing a tennis match and kicking the rear end of a right.

You know, long-time rival in tennis or something like that. I think it also depends on your chemistry that day, too. Right. So so I don't think that there's a formula for one person, but whatever keeps you balanced. But I tried to keep these things going. I agree with you that exercise a regular exercise is important.

I also personally do yoga regularly. I've discovered this maybe three, four years ago. And it's a really, it balances you in some things. Some days you have 10 minutes, you do 10 minutes, some days you have more, you do more. So not only exercising of body at the same time, you're exercising your mind in a different way than when you're reading or doing experiments or seeing patients trying to solve a clinical dilemma.

I think your mind, your brain also needs stretching. So if you only stretch it in one direction, it's deformed. So you know, like seeing patients at stretch stretches this way, we will research stretches this way, but if I do yoga this way, you know, exercise this way, family that way. So you're going to have more space.

So for me, you know, it depending on how things are one may do better on day am. I may do better the other way. 

[00:23:43] Griffin Jones: I didn't think that I would do an Engaged MD sponsorship read for an episode on work-life balance. And then I got to the end of the episode and I'm like, no, this is the meat and potatoes of what you want from someone like Engaged MD. One of my guests and I are talking about the junk bonds of work that go into the work life allocation, the junk bonds are those things that are monotonous tasks that should be done at scale, should be done with software, should be done ahead of time, should be done at the convenience of the user, but aren't. Things like repeating the same information to patients to teach them things that are coming in their protocol.

The same legal forms, except you're tracking down one for this patient. And your staff is basically law clerks because they're tracking it down for another patient. All of these things that should be done at scale, that should be organized in a platform. And that's Engaged MD. That way you're spending your time with the most valuable minutes possible tailoring the experience to the patient's needs.

They know what you're talking about because they're well-educated and you're not acting like a darn paralegal go to engagedmd.com/irh, but only if you want 25% off the implementation fee, if you do, if you go to engagemd.com/irh and you select. You heard them on the show or you heard them from me, you'll get a few bucks off of your implementation fee and it helps us to create more content and give you more resources like this, but you'll also be getting time back to make life better for you, for your staff, for your patients, because that allocation is not infinite.

The junk bonds have to go. And the meaningful work and the meaningful things that we get out of life have to stay, go to engagedmd.com/irh and get some of your time back.

 When you said at the end of the day, it's the fund that helped get you rich was the most important. And in this context where we're talking about rich in life, as opposed to material wealth, but that can be a part of it.

And I think that the question people need to get to this allocation answer is what does it look like at the end of your life? And what, what do you think you'll regret? And I do believe that there are people like Jeff Bezos and like Elon Musk that I don't think they're going to regret, not spending time with their loved ones that much.

 I really believe that those are people that will regret if they haven't gotten to the absolute limit of their pursuit. So I do think that is possible for most of us though. I don't think we're going to look back and say, I wish I worked one more day. I wished that I had taken that meeting.

I wished that I had done that for most of us. I believe that we're going to either regret not having pursued something else that was meaningful or spending more time with our loved ones. But what we will regret if we just sit on the couch and do nothing and we don't, and we don't become better at our craft.

And so now you have more things competing for time. Potentially what I think has to go is the things that don't lead to any one of those things that have been decided as meaningful, meaning candy crush, video games and not to say that all of those things can never be meaningful, but I I'm talking about the things that don't fulfill our, our biggest interest in the form of hobbies that don't make us closer to our family.

That don't make us better at our craft. You know, the YouTube videos that I think those things are the things that have to go and if you want to have a balanced life, you really have to, you have to protect even more. Don't you, in terms of your time allocation. 

[00:27:44] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Absolutely. You've got to get rid of the junk bonds, you know so penny stocks, whatever exactly.

I mean, I'm not saying I have an ideal situation here. Yeah. As you said, you know, watching TV, you know, Fantastic movies that you can watch and great sports events you can watch. But if you can, if you're consuming a TV three, four hours a day, the social media Instagrams and things like that you know, you're already, what is that time coming from a lot of those other components, right?

As you said if you think that you fulfilled everything else and you still have free time, congratulations to you and you must be in a different dimension, but go ahead and invest your time into other things. Perhaps one of the things that I do is, yeah, I rarely watch TV, for example, I'm never on social media.

I'm very selective. For example, I mainly use LinkedIn, but that's select, maybe I will post once a month. Maybe we'll our operation we'll do an Instagram post once a month. As you said that the social media could be poisonous in that sense. You know, obviously if you have a professional operation, I think this is more for private practices.

 They do all that stuff for you that can spare you, right. In terms of business marketing. 

[00:29:11] Griffin Jones: Well, a lot of people think that I am just ubiquitously pro social media and I approach life as a consumer and a business owner. Not always through the same exact lens. It's important to look through both lenses, but sometimes they are different as a business owner.

I can't get romantic about where my client's attention is. My perspective client's attention, or in the case of providers where their patient's attention is, I have to go where that attention is, and I have to speak to people where they are. But as a consumer, I don't need to be watching what my friends are having for breakfast or some political debate between two people that have no business commenting on policy one way or the other. And I think that has to do with the junk bonds that you were referencing. It's not for me to say this. This is exactly a junk bonds. Although I think generally I could speak to it and generally be right, but it's going to be different for people's allocation, but people do need to get rid of that first, because there's never going to be enough time for all of the other. 

[00:30:19] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Right, I mean a social media. You're right. There's a business function of it. As I said, you know, you can use that, but otherwise it's designed to be addictive. I mean, it's a drug, so we just, the more we take it, the more you'll be evicted and it's a war text. You'll be socked in there. So, you know I was always scared of that.

[00:30:38] Griffin Jones: Did you think in these terms, when you were building your career outlook, what did you think as you took your first real job? Or did you think, well, this is how I want to build my life. Or did you start thinking about terms like work-life balance after, after your kids started growing up after millennials started talking about it all over the place?

Is this something that a focus that came to you later on? Or did youset out to build your career in a certain way?

[00:31:08] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I think cliche, right, that's what they say life is what happens to you when you're busy planning. And so obviously, no, but I mean, my goal was always to have fun and that if something is not giving me fun, I'm not saying, you know, fun, meaning you know, I'm going to be playing cards all day or something, but there has to be fun.

Right? So when I followed my own principal, it just naturally happens. I try to do my allocation based on that, but of course, you know, the the more you live and see the more wrong steps and missteps you take, you realize that, oh, you know, I shouldn't have gotten that waste your next time. You're better trained the mouse.

You don't get into that trap. Yeah, I don't think that you can do that allocation at birth. 

[00:31:58] Griffin Jones: Well, maybe that's what we're starting to see more of maybe not at birth, but starting to see it younger and younger. And I wonder if that's the difference when we talk about millennials wanting work-life balance, one of the responses has been, well, all the generations have wanted work-life balance.

It would have been great to have, and surely millennials are not exceptional as humans in the sense that they are the only ones that want balance between their work and their hobbies and their health and their fitness.

[00:32:28] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Well, I think there expectional, I admire millennials you know, like they're the homodeus.

[00:32:33] Griffin Jones: What's exceptional about them? 

[00:32:36] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: They've got all the skills, you know, like we didn't grow up with a giant life pop med, you know, the internet, right. We came into that. So they have this huge life, bob mitt on internet. They can, they can get their answers to everything. I mean, one question is now, how necessary is the classical schooling system?

And you know, you can get all the information. Of course, the skill we need to teach them is to objectively analyze what they see on the internet to scrutinize it. But my 15 year old has more wisdom than I had when I was at 35, because of all the giant global library that they have at their disposal.

 So they figure it out. When I figured it out at 35, they figured out that 15, of course they don't, you know, like, why am I going to be a doctor? I want something that offers me more balanced. I'm going to plan something so I can work from home or, you know I'm going to boost start-up I don't want to work for anybody else.

So I think that's where I'm saying that they have that kind of long view. They don't have the classic on the standing of her going to working for somebody it's still the right. Of course that's going to create some kind of anxiety in that generation because you know, there's so much competition for the independent space.

So it's an interesting experiment and I'm waiting to see how it's going to end. You know, like I lived there 15, 20 years, we'll figure it out. 

[00:33:57] Griffin Jones: So I think that's what makes them accept. It's not the desire to, because you yourself have talked about that desire, but it is exceptional that they are coming into the work force with a picture in mind of what work-life balance looks like.

And they are willing to prioritize it in terms of walking away from offers or quitting jobs or who they go to work for. And your point is interesting about how the accelerated learning from the digital age has been a part of the accelerated expectations, right. You hit on the accelerated learning what you knew at 35, your 15 year old knows.

I think that's all also true for expectations of, oh, if this is what a 35 year-old drives and what a 35 year old makes in salary. And this is what I want coming out of college too. 

[00:34:53] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: You know, I don't know if it's some kind of enumeration issue, but definitely they have I think you know, more global view on things and the priorities.

And so, you know, maybe you know, maybe they don't think that you need to sacrifice your life because life is the most, you know, most valuable commodity. To you know, have a luxury car, right. And I think they're so globally connected. They experienced the word globally and you know, they have other ways of enjoying life rather than traveling on a private jet.

So you know, it's not a hippie generation, right. But I look at it as you know, differently, less militaristic male generation. I don't know how I put it, but that they're less regimented to me more broad minded. And they don't want to be you know, put into cubicles to achieve what they want to achieve.

And I don't think there's any amount of money that can force them into the lifestyle that they detests. They think they have options, let's say.

[00:35:54] Griffin Jones: Well, I think one wrench in the works is that having junk bonds in the portfolio, I think they want the yield of the portfolio. And that is, it is possible to get a high yield from portfolio.

But I think that there's a lot of junk bonds in there. And that's one of the concerns that I have when I hear the word self-care and I hear it's, I am more than open to the idea of self-care it is necessary for being productive. If it's something that, that actually helps rejuvenate you, that if it actually helps you pursue a larger goal, but if it's just increasing media consumption or if it's just an excuse to differ from an obligation, then I don't see how we get to a place where we have 30 hour productive work weeks. If there are marbled with escapism. 

[00:36:54] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Right. Escapism it's the right word. I mean, that's why it's a drug, right, alcohol, drugs, social media. You're constantly escaping from what you have to do or what you should really be thinking.

 That's kind of what the quick send for the next generation. So that's going to engulf some, some talents and bog them down but others will learn how to dance around it and hopefully do great things. And I think also being aware of what we are doing to environment is also very a lot of young generations are aware of that. And a lot of them are more worried about that then you know, filling up their coffers because you know what good it does if you don't have a good healthy planet to live with, what are you going to do with all that money? So I think that's the other reason, I think this generation will have a long view because they need to think about the entire planet with what they do. 

[00:37:54] Griffin Jones: Well, \ they do have a lot more to think about in terms of, you know, having to have a response for other things that are, that are happening. And so let's pretend that we, we have solved for the junk bond issue for the moment that we've gotten all the junk bonds out of our allocation.

We are left with high yield, low cost index funds that lead us to a good outcome. At the end of all this. But then there is this pestering concept that I hear from, and about physicians who look and I don't know that it's erroneous. It could very well be valid, but the, but the idea is that, well, physicians can never really be off.

They can never be totally unplugged because what if our patients need something from us.

[00:38:45] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Well, I have to take a break now, so I'll see you in five minutes just getting right. I get to a point physicians can be off on the paper, but they can never be off here. Because I mean, at least personally, but I know a lot of other people, you know, and if we wouldn't, if I go away.

 I think about my patients. What happened to this? What happened to that? What happened to that? That's the nature of it. That's why you don't pick this field. If you're really not, you know, you don't like to have that kind of lifestyle. Right. But not necessarily your uncle, every movement of today, but when we are caring for people's future it's hard to completely detach yourself from that.

But if you're working in a good team situation and you have colleagues that you can trust maybe you can disconnect nicely when you're off, when you're doing your yoga, when you're like a week away with you know, doing the things you like. But if you're a one man show, yeah, that's very hard.

Maybe one of the advantages of being an academic sort of larger practice is that you can have other people take the burden off of you sometimes. 

[00:39:53] Griffin Jones: Can you do that if you're taking a two week vacation with your family and you just want to be alone with your family and a cabin in Europe, can you say I'm not taking any calls?

I trust my partners to be able to handle the case. Can a physician do that? 

[00:40:12] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: I can imagine a physician can do that. So I'm I can imagine that it happens in other practices. All I could say that, you know, academics and other places, I've been to several places and I've seen that happen. I don't necessarily see anything wrong.

That's an individual personality issue, I think And you can also set limits. I mean, I don't need to know these, but if something like this happened, yes, you can contact me. You know, we have patients that we make very personal personal relationships in terms of patient doctor relationships and that sometimes they just want to hear from you.

And so yeah, there will be situations, well you could be in on vacation, but there's some emergency, we'll have to answer that. But the key to that is to be able to switch on and switch off you make a phone call, you know, give instructions, and now you're back to as if it's never happened so it's matter of a.

[00:41:05] Griffin Jones: What about the doctors that say, I trust my partners, they're perfectly qualified, but my patients expect me and they have to be able to reach me. And I can never have a window where I'm unreachable. 

[00:41:20] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Right. If you're complaining about that, that means that you need to change it. So you cannot say that I don't trust my colleagues.

I need to be reachable, but I'm never off. So that's like trying to have the cake and eat it right. Going back to that. But when it comes to patient care and when you're trying to be personal with your patient, provide personal, there's no formula for that other than cloning yourself. So either you trust your team or be available.

So I don't know if there's a formula for that. So I, for me, I set sort of criteria. Okay. You know, XYZ happens. Perfect. Good. Go ahead and map. But it hits, I dunno, let me cry. Then you have to call me and you know, that way, if you get a call, you know, that it was absolutely necessary or, you know, you clone yourself, there's exactly a personal like you and a fine great, go away to Mars on a mission or whatever.

Nobody can reach you. 

[00:42:21] Griffin Jones: I have somewhat of a formula. It doesn't totally address the limits that you would set in terms of, of what you can use of what people can contact you for or not. But it does give a formula for how much time one might want to protect. Have you ever heard of the book profit first? 

[00:42:41] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Maybe I'm not sure.

[00:42:42] Griffin Jones: Well, link to it in the show notes. The author's last name. I can't pronounce, even if I remembered it, but it's the concept is a bit contrary to gap, generally accepted accounting principles, where revenue minus operating expenses equals profit and profit. First, it simply is revenue minus profit equals operating expenses.

So you're always allocating for profit, even from the infancy of a business. And if you're an infant business, you, you have almost nothing to allocate anyway. So, but you start with that current allocation percentage, and then you have a target allocation percentage. And so in the beginning, you might be saving a dollar, but the point is that you reserve profit from the very beginning and learn to manage operating expenses accordingly, as opposed to the reverse. And when I think of the needs that we have to have loving relationships with our families to have mental health and clarity breaks, there has to be some time and I'm not going to tell people how much time it is.

 But when I'm with my loved ones, that there's nothing that's going to interrupt that unless it is a grave emergency. And so I'm going to write this book someday, Kutluk called time first, where it, you start off with a current allocation percentage and maybe it's just, you know what, every Sunday evening, I'm gonna I'm tucking my daughter in, and I'm going to read her a book and nothing will threaten that.

And then a year from now, I want to be able to do this and five years from now, I want to be able to take three weeks in Europe. I believe that that has to happen. People have to have some allocation of percentage of uninterruptible time and then based on how that goes and how much they want, then they can have a different target to augment for the future.

[00:44:32] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Right, I mean, you know, the vacation break, whatever is break, but I also think about you may have that time, but there is a situation. If you didn't respond that would create consequences that cost you more time in the future, which would come out of your family time. So even when you're on your off time, you have to be able to recognize the situation.

If you didn't respond at that time. That will cost you a lot more time in the future. So you can think about scenarios of, you know, the complication happens and you, you don't give the right instructions or whatever that, you know, them medications may take more time. So it's a bit tricky. We say that, but you know, as a physician as I said, you need to be able to have some kind of artificial intelligence in your system that will read that out.

Do that calculation for you before you're interrupted. It doesn't happen a lot if you have a good team. So that comes to building good teams. You good leaders are the ones who develop other leaders. Your leadership is measured by the index. Of how many leaders you can develop or how many people who would lead others.

But when you're building your team, you need to build people who can also independently think and function with you. Again, if you don't have a good team it's hard to have time off. 

[00:45:57] Griffin Jones: Well, in order to have an independent team, though, you also have to take some time off because how do you know if they're really independent or not?

If you're constantly there, they will ask you and you will stick your finger in the pudding jar. If, if that temptation is offered, I took two weeks last year in 2021. And my team didn't make every decision that I would have agreed with. It revealed to me. Oh, there's, there's one to three things here that are clearly missing from our core processes that I need to fix.

And I only knew that because I went away and they made a different decision that I wouldn't have made. and because of that, it's like, okay, well, I was gone for two weeks that the farm isn't going to burn down the practice, isn't going to burn down during a two-week period. But then I can make the, it could, I guess it could. 

Well, that's a good, that is a good point though, because I couldn't have done that six years ago, so that is a good point.

 But that's why you start with a day and then maybe it's a couple of days and then it's two weeks. And eventually I'd like to be able to go for big blocks at a time. So we've talked a lot about the different balances of work, not just what goes into work, but also the things that accompany it like health and fitness, family and hobby.

We're going to conclude the show and a lot of private practice owners listen, but there are a lot of division chiefs that listen to this show. And one of our biggest segments is fellows and it's younger associates that are thinking about what the next move next move is. So how would you want to conclude with them, Dr. Oktay? 

[00:47:34] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Well, to fellows are the biggest, you know, very important part of the team, whether they're clinical fellows, research fellows, you know, observers, whatnot. And in my career, I always worked with fellows of again, either clinical fellows or fellows from various parts of the world.

 And their contributions are tremendous. So they are important part of the. And that's, you know, by working with a mentor prepares them well for the future. So my advice to them again, I said, you're a fellow now, but if you are planning to be a fellow, you're going to start early bit, but also find yourself a good mentor and which could help you with whatever you want to accomplish in your career and work with them. 

[00:48:18] Griffin Jones: And you said that you are active on LinkedIn, so that may have been a little subliminal nod if somebody can people reach out to you on LinkedIn, if they're interested in it.. 

[00:48:27] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Oh yeah, absolutely.

All the time. So, you know, I decided to focus on one social media gadget. And I think LinkedIn works well because it's nicely filtered and more focused on professional topics and I think it's pretty efficient.

You know, I have through LinkedIn may have formed many alliances, solved many issues reached out to executives of insurance companies when we had problems with the patients, reimbursements, things like that. So I think LinkedIn is a really a good way to expand your network. 

[00:49:02] Griffin Jones: Well, before I let you go, I know that everybody listening to the audio and not watching the video is picturing you as a millennial with your artists in coffee and your beanie and a flannel, but Dr. Oktay is in a suit and tie today, and it's been a pleasure having you on Inside Reproductive Health. Thank you Dr. Kutluk Oktay for coming to IRH. 

[00:49:22] Dr. Kutluk Oktay: Thank you. Thank you. Next time, I'll put that digital outfit on. 

[00:49:27] Griffin Jones: Sounds great. 

Brand vs Reputation: 4 Competitive Disadvantages for Fertility Business Owners

By Griffin Jones

“Our reputation speaks for itself,”

Does it?

Young, massively funded companies are entering the reproductive health space and developing widely recognizable brands to a population that had been generally unfamiliar with the field.

Established fertility companies often attempt to counter these branding advantages with their reputation. 

Reputation is extremely valuable for all of us business owners in the reproductive health space, but especially for fertility specialists. Even when process complaints and negative outcomes make an REI’s rating less than five stars, you still have a proud reputation. You’ve dedicated your career--one which very few other people can do--to help people have families. Your reputation deserves respect.

Still, reproductive health companies that make little distinction between brand and reputation are at a competitive disadvantage.

Brand and reputation overlap. They can work with or against each other. But they are not the same.

In the absence of the intentional formula ‘reputation plus brand’, a fertility business suffers from the default equations of ‘reputation minus brand’ or ‘brand minus reputation’.

“Brand is about relevance and differentiation. Reputation is about legitimacy” 

A strong brand helps communicate that the company and its offerings are relevant and uniquely able to meet customer needs. A solid reputation is desirable because all businesses ultimately depend (either directly or indirectly) on the goodwill of the governments and communities in which they operate”. From 'Don’t Confuse Reputation With Brand' by Richard Ettenson and Jonathan Knowles

In the case of your fertility practice or reproductive health company, your reputation amounts to what is said about you by these five groups

  1. Patients/clients

  2. Peers

  3. Employees

  4. People you do business with

  5. Media

Patients

On social media, on online review sites like Google and FertilityIQ, in patient support groups like RESOLVE and Fertility Matters. Through patient satisfaction feedback platforms like Press Gainey or Net Promoter Score.

Peers

If you are a physician this includes colleagues in the field, but also includes aspiring providers, referring providers, and competitors. At ASRM and other conferences. In private conversation

Employees: 

On LinkedIn and sites like Glassdoor. At networking events and your own office.

People you do business with: Your vendors, expert advisors. How you treat them and pay them gets around, too.

Media: 

The coverage that you do or don’t have from reporting outlets.

Reputation isn’t always fair. It is what it is. It doesn’t matter if one negative story in the press is a stain on your search results. It doesn’t matter if competitors drag your name through the mud, if a few former employees have an ax to grind, or if some former IVF patients take a negative outcome out on you. A sterling reputation is hard to come by.

A strong reputation is not necessarily equatable to a strong brand, either. And vise versa.

BRAND IS WHAT YOU SHOW OF YOURSELF

While reputation is what your five constituencies perceive and say about you, brand is what you give them to recognize you and associate with you (or not). Reputation is sometimes reactive. Brand is meant to be proactive.

Brand does at least four things that reputation does not do. It 

  1. Multiplies 

  2. Differentiates

  3. Expresses, and

  4. Promises

  1. Multiplies
    The simplest definition of brand is simply, a mark. No; logos, slogans, taglines, and ambassadors are not in and of themselves, a brand. Nowhere close. Still, these symbols allow companies to scale their message and perception to a magnitude and readiness that reputation cannot.
    “Brand functions as a multiplier” -Mark Di Somma, Brand Strategy Insider.

  2. Differentiates
    The purest form of differentiation is recognition. A successful brand allows each of the aforementioned groups  to recognize an organization’s position and differentiate it from its competitors instantly. An artisan coffee shop may have a wonderful reputation, but you recall Starbucks’ mocha lattes, the way they name the sizes of their drinks, and how they write your name on the cup just by seeing their logo.

  3. Expresses
    We’ve chosen to split the concept of brand identification into the two concepts of differentiation and expression because differentiation allows consumers to identify you out of a crowd, while expression allows them to use you as part of how they identify themselves.

    There is an abundance of research, including this study from Elsevier, that shows how “consumers seek new ways in which they can express their personal identity through brands”. The more our field serves and works with newer generations, the more they use brands to express themselves. 

    The core of Gen Z is the idea of manifesting individual identity. Consumption therefore becomes a means of self-expression.” - (From McKinsey & Company,  ‘True Gen’: Generation Z and its implications for companies’  byTracy Francis and Fernanda Hoefel

  4. Promises
    Reputation is the judgment of your promise. Brand is the promise. Patients and clients set their own expectations in the absence, and sometimes in spite, of a clear promise. The more strongly your brand reinforces your promise, the more you are able to impact the measure by which you are judged.

REPUTATION PLUS BRAND

When fertility companies fail to distinguish the difference between brand and reputation, they are at a competitive disadvantage because of how reputation and brand bolster or undermine one another. 

Reputation and brand overlap because they are both born of positioning and culture, but they are not equally synonymous.

In the absence of the intentional formula ‘reputation plus brand’, fertility business owners are left with the results of ‘reputation minus brand’ or ‘brand minus reputation’.

Consider the four advantages that a robust brand is meant to secure for your company. The last two, expression and promise, are particular vulnerabilities for reproductive health companies.

If you would like to further explore the brand and reputation potential of your fertility business, we address that in our Goal and Competitive Diagnostic.

125: How to Attract Per Diem Embryologists

On this episode, Griffin Jones and Giles Palmer, the executive director of a group called the International IVF Initiative, discuss  what’s happening in the lab and why clinicians, managers, and other folks should pay attention. Giles holds webinars for embryologists and other fertility professionals, attracting over 800 people each session. Tune in to this episode to hear more on the shortage of embryologists and how automation could be one key to increasing your embryologists’ capacity and quality of life. 


Listen to the full episode to hear: 

  • Giles perspective on hiring young embryologists

  • How automation will affect lab efficiency

  • Giles viewpoint on corporate IVF

  • How Giles is able to attract large crowds of embryologists 


Giles Palmer: 


Company name: International IVF Initiative

LinkedIn Handle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giles-palmer-52461531/ 

Twitter Handle: @IVFLIFE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/giles.a.palmer 

Website URL: https://www.kosmogonia.net/ 


Want to make your company irresistible to new talent? Let’s start the conversation at fertilitybridge.com



Transcript

[00:00:00] Griffin Jones: So I think what I'm saying is the cycle of life is continuing, but yes, it seems to me that the trajectory of most things is consolidation and fragmentation happens with countries, happens with businesses. And so we're seeing consolidation right now, but I also think we're seeing fragmentation and, and niching as well. 

 

[00:01:00] Griffin Jones: On today's episode and back in the lab and I'm across the pond. I haven't had too many guests from the UK or from Europe and on today's show, I have an embryologist, someone with lab experience, someone running an initiative, that they'll talk about from the UK who has also worked many years in Europe.

This is Giles Palmer. He is based in Cardiff Wales at the moment. And now he's the executive director of a group called the International IVF Initiative that he formed with some other lab folks in the start of the pandemic. And now they have audience. Like several hundred people, not just embryologist and lab staff, but also clinicians.

And in this episode, we talk about what clinicians, managers and other folks who aren't in the lab have to worry about what's happening in the lab because it's coming for them so enjoy this show with Giles.

Mr. Palmer Giles. Welcome the Insider Reproductive Health. 

[00:01:57] Giles Palmer: Thank you very much. We meet at last, I think we occupied the same you know, virtual university, if you like, but it's good to see you, you know, So it's great to be on the show. Thank you very much.

[00:02:09] Griffin Jones: Well, I like to give you the ability to decipher some of my audience. I'd like some exposure to yours because I got to confess. I have not had too many guests from the UK on the show of 125. You might be number three, maybe number four. And so that's fine. We are having to recruit a, too many guests. And so I felt we need more representation across the Anglosphere and here you are. 

[00:02:37] Giles Palmer: Well, thank you very much. I shouldn't be offended at all. I mean, I only moved to the UK only about six years ago. Yes. I was born in Britain, but I've worked most of my life in Europe. Okay. And I came back to the UK, you know, only a short time ago, so although we're out of your work. I still like to think of myself as European. But certainly from across the pond. So yeah, perhaps I can give a different perspective in things in the IVF world, in that respect. 

[00:03:02] Griffin Jones: So having worked in Europe for a number of years now, working in the UK and the initiative that you're involved in that we'll talk about.

That sounds like you have a good exposure to both the UK and Europe. And I want you to give us just a little bit of state of the union of what's happening over there. So here in the US and Canada last year and a half is you're probably aware most centers have just been slammed. Some have not. If they're in competitive markets or they haven't updated their business in a long time, but I would say 75% centers have been slammed.

I might be starting to change now. We'll talk about that in a little bit, if that might be the case, but what's been happening in Europe and the UK post covid.

[00:03:43] Giles Palmer: Oh sure but what's the word you use slammed was that? 

[00:03:47] Griffin Jones: Very busy. It means very busy. 

[00:03:49] Giles Palmer: Very busy. Okay. 

[00:03:49] Griffin Jones: To be at or exceeding capacity. 

[00:03:52] Giles Palmer: Well, thank you very much to clarify that marvelous. Yes. It is incredibly busy.

Both in Europe and in the UK. And you can see this from the posts, you know, everyone is hiring, and that's from the countries that I've worked for and in the UK. But yeah. But why is that? It's not just that there's been like a bottleneck, you know, and people haven't been treated over there pandemic.

First of all from the patient point of view, I think that people have thought, you know, they're like reassess their live and they say, yes, I want to have IVF. So yes, there's been a small amount of people that couldn't be treated and now they're being treated, but there's a lot of people that are thinking, yes, you know, I want to start a family.

So I think there's been an increased demand. Also, you know, the life of the embryologist has changed dramatically over the past few years. I mean there's more free cycles. Okay. Which means you have to have a devoted person to do that in the lab, it's not so much, you know, like full rounded, like, in the IVF lab, you'll have an egg collection, you'll fertilize, and some days later you'll then have the transfer, you know a lot of people are freezing the embryos and transferring them in a further cycle.

So that means that there's a lot of you know, force to be done as well. Which means as well for like the dynamics of a clinic as well. And I don't know if you've touched on this in some of your programs, but you get a higher throughput through your theater. If people are just having egg collections, when people are having egg collections you know, egg retrievals, but also embryo transfers, then there's going to be some time that you've got to sort of a lot for that, but I think the dynamics have changed in the clinic. And even within the inner workings, people are working a lot more and continuing on for that, of course you know, PGT and biopsy. You know, other techniques are being used as well. So I just think in a way it's a great time to be an embryologist, but it's a very tiring time to be an embryologist. 

[00:05:45] Griffin Jones: Is batching common in the UK and in Europe?

[00:05:51] Giles Palmer: Not so much, no in your Europe and especially where I was like in the Mediterranean which is quite shocking for people in the states. I know that like using summer, we wind down and there's a reason for that. Like, you know, for example, I was in Greece and there was no treatments in August, okay,, but that meant that, you know, the whole staff could be taken you know, could take a holiday.

You know, the clinic could be shut down. It could be just, you know, like maintenance done on that period of time. And then, you know, back up again after August or so that was like in that sense, patching, but in the UK, you know, there's no distinction between, you know, summer and winter there, mainly because of the weather, I think, but there's none of that that goes on, obviously in large air, you know, larger countries like India, there is a lot of batching just because it's such a wide expanse and the such a demand for embryologists that they cannot be treated in that sense.

So there'll be a clinic which will open in like a remote area for, you know, for a certain amount of weeks, but I wouldn't say batching has done. No, no. The only time it may be done, I think is in clinics that treat HIV patients. And then we sort of have a certain time where they'll treat HIV patients you know, for risk of contamination and whatever they like bachelor in that sense. But now it's, work all around the year. I think a few days of in holidays, but it's busier than ever. 

[00:07:09] Griffin Jones: So what are people doing to meet the increased volume? You said everybody's hiring, which means that there are not enough people coming in and filling those positions as quickly as possible as it is here. And so what are people doing?

[00:07:23] Giles Palmer: I mean, the desperately trying to find staff, and it's not always the solution that you can find a trained staff, okay, there was effect, I was giving a talk in Arizona, that was the start of January this year. And I've talked about mental health, which was a study we did which was the international study. We did actually with the group that I worked with and we looked at burnout. So ita lot of embryologist who are suffering or on the verge of burnout.

There's so much work that's going on. But that said it's very difficult to recruit younger people that have the skills, now it takes investment to train people. And the ideal thing is of course, to find someone who's like pretty well-trained or at least knows the basics. Now there's a lot of masters courses all around the world going on teaching at various stages, some are treating practical aspects.

Some are treating just theoretical. So there is quite a large pool of young embryologists, but it's being accepted to sort of join a team because as I said, there is an investment that needs to be done plus, and we're sort of changing tack a little bit. There's a growing workforce, especially in the states.

There's a lot of embryologists who have worked in clinics for over 20 years or more. This again was a finding from our study and these people will be retiring soon. Okay. And leaving the workforce. So there is I think a crisis coming perhaps when we have to find the men, you know, the members of staff to actually fill in this space.

Again, you mentioned, what are people doing to alleviate this? Two things I'd like to mention one is that there seems to be more and more what I called locum, but you call per diem embryologist,. okay. And it's a supply in need. I mean there are many more that are coming out and they can actually move from clinic to clinic and give their skills to a clinic who for many reasons needs to have more staff.

Okay. They have to be mobile. They have to be very well trained to sort of go to another lab. In fact cook in another kitchen, if you like, okay. They have to know all the equipment, they have to know all the protocols and they have to assimilate very quickly into a lab. So there's many more per diems coming into the fray, if you like.

And one thing which is changing is that now that the clinics are sometimes in chains, you know, the corporate companies which are coming out the advantage of those is that they can in fact relocate or they can move around their staff. So now I'm terrible at the geography of the states.

But you know, let's say that it's spread across the nation. If there's a shortcoming in one of the clinics, okay. In some kind of conglomerate, then they can effect, you know, move around people to sort of care for that. So that I think answers, that's my long answer to your, the question, but there are ways around everything again it's a good time to be an embryologist because there are many jobs out there.

[00:10:15] Griffin Jones: That's right. It's a seller's market at the embryologist, the seller in this context, though, people are, they're recruiting, they're using per diem folks. Is there any acquiescence to the burnout in, from the side of the clinic and the lab in that? Okay. Well, we just can't hire enough per diem folks, or we can't replace the folks that are being burnt out.

Our current staff are telling us they're burns out and we're so afraid of we lose even one that will, our problem will be compounded that much more. Is anyone saying, okay, well, our waitlist for patients might be two months to start IVF. Well, sorry. We're going to have to make it three or two and a half because otherwise we're going to burn out our embryologist.

Is anyone acquiescing as far as you? 

[00:11:02] Giles Palmer: I know of one example that slowed down there are treatments and that's a clinic in the UK actually who through staffing reasons they just had to. Okay. And. It's all power to them to be able to do that because you kind of went to clinic, you know, on a shoe string and you kind of when a clinic, you know if there's not an adequate number of staff.

So I think that has been the case. But it has been the case, even with the pandemic. If you think about it, the way that they've had to slow down in the UK, they couldn't have had to stop completely. I know in the states that wasn't the case. In every single state in North America. But you know, there has been this like management of staff just sort of keeps them furloughed if you like.

Okay. And sort of like gear them up again to be done. What has happened in the pandemic is that there's been a lot of like a, transfer's a bit like football. There's been a lot of you know, key players that have moved from clinic to clinic. And that's been the case, not just in the IVF world, but also in any kind of industry.

We've found people have reevaluated their values and their job. And if they haven't happened, if they haven't been happy in their in a particular job and feel a bit disgruntled with that company, then they had a great opportunity to change. We see a lot of fluidity over the last few months.

But then if you've noticed as well, there's been a lot of changes going on. And of course that goes fuels. Why people have been advertising so much. So there has been more change going on in that market, you said it's a sellers market. Well, I kind of took about salaries. You know there are clinics which are offering, like sign up bonuses for that, which I think is a great incentive.

But salary isn't everything and that's very easy for me to say, but you know, there are various things in your working life, you can look at as opposed to just salary being the reason why you leave. We know the embryologist are, are the greatest asset to a clinic, but if they're so good then you always have the danger that they're going to leave.

Now I was in lab management, I'm an embryologist, but I've been in lab management for, many years over 30 years. And some of your staff maybe like headhunted, you know, maybe taken away. Well, that's Inevitable, you have to be gracious when that happens. There are wheels within wheels.

We're still a very small community embryologist. I don't know how many thousands we are worldwide, but we are quite sociable and we all meet up, you know, even more so virtually, so is to be gracious. And if they have to go, they have to go. But there are many ways that you can keep an embryologist and it can be an, and you refer to burnout.

It can be just a flat fact that you, you give more amicable working hours or flexible hours. 

[00:13:36] Griffin Jones: I was having this conversation with Dr. Tony Anderson from Texas, and he was saying the exact same. You said, but I pushed back and said, well, how do you give people better working hours or fewer hours? When the queue of patients is figuratively around the corner and if you do that, then you're either pushing back treatment for people or you are putting the workload onto another embryologist. Say how do you do that when the demand is so high? 

[00:14:09] Giles Palmer: Well, I'm sure there's no company that's going to give someone, you know, extra time off if that's at the detriment of their lab staff.

Okay. But it's all part of management, you know, it's all part of lab manager. You have to have redundancy anyway. Okay. that is a day-to-day thing that a lab manager has to cope with. There's always going to be, there's always going to be someone in your large chain of clinics that, you know, you're going to be ill for one day. I'm going to have to take time off for like personal reasons. So you should always find that you can fit people to their abilities. You have to have younger staff. I'm not saying you can't and you have to train them and you have to train them on the job. Like I said, there are many training colleges around.

Okay. Especially in North America that, you have someone who has the competencies to sort of start with a less learning curve. Okay. When they join the lab, it is a commitment to the lab manager to actually see that everyone is competent and everyone starts off. But you know, it has to be done in the UK in fact, there's a new sort of subset of embryologists. Think they're called lab practitioners. I could be wrong, but they just do egg collections and semen analysis. So they do, let's say You know, limited workload, but it can be like a job which would take an embryologist, you know, hours away from doing other work while the other more experienced people will do.

You know, the embryo biopsies, the ICSI, makeup the culture medium. So, you know, there are ways around that.

[00:15:33] Griffin Jones: What do you think should be eliminated Giles and in any workloads, there's priority is eliminate, automate, delegate. And when you're getting so busy, you have to be extra scrutinous. What do you think could be eliminated or automated readily that you still see many labs not doing?

[00:15:56] Giles Palmer: I think you know, a lot of it is the paperwork. Okay. Now you don't have to be paper free, but you can be paper light in a lot of the clinics. A cornerstone of clinical embryology is of course quality control. Okay. But you still see people walking around the lab with, you know, pieces of paper you know, with a little tick box.

 Okay. There are now electronic means reflections where it's an outweighed and just electronically typing all these numbers you have to do. And they're forgotten about in a way until you want to actually retrieve them and reflect on them for any number of reasons. Okay. There's lots of things that can be done around the lab, which again, can be automated.

You do in fact, have these alarm systems on most of the critical pieces of equipment, but you still have to visually check them every day. Okay. I'm not saying that you shouldn't. But there's a lot of paperwork that goes on now, embryology as well. And we've spoken about this many times between the peers is there's a lot of admin work that is done with embryology.

Now that is a root of great concern because when an embryologist is trained, he doesn't realize that he's got to do another quality control assessments and he's got to do stocktaking and the, and the inventory to look after the, you know, quiet back. Okay. Even speak to patients. A lot of people are unaware that they have to do that when they train to be an embryologist.

And it could be that the embryologist wants to spend time on the bench work. So, you know, automating all this interaction with the patients, if you don't want to, or the admin, it could be done and there's not an efficient EMR at the moment, which can help with that. You've got to take yourself out of your working routine and type things in.

But you know, that will change. We often speak on our initiative about, you know, like smart devices now in the future, there'll be, you know, like perhaps smart dishes where you haven't got to use a sticky labels and there'll be voice to action certain ways that you can witness things in that sense.

But technology is coming just to take all the admin away from the embryologist. So that will be a good thing. 

[00:18:01] Griffin Jones: Well, there are some life sciences companies out there now. With replace a lot of the manual systems and both with storage and managing if they're not cleaning up right now on the heels of labs needing to become more efficient because they can't fill enough embryologists, then they don't have a very good sales platform.

I think there are some solutions out there I'm not qualified necessarily to speak right now. The pros and cons of each, but are these, some of the things that you talk about in your initiative that you call Ifree, which is the international IVF initiative. Tell us more about that. What do you do there?

[00:18:41] Giles Palmer: Sure. Well to answer your question about, does it, does it fill the void? Well, it's certainly a space which has been filled up by many companies. So, obviously you know, there is work for everyone to do making things automated and one is with the, you know, like quite a storage. It's a no brainer just because why should we have to check ourselves visually every year that we've put something in the right place, if it can be done automatically, then it should be done. You know, once AI of course has perhaps been overused these past few years. I mean, you know, everything is AI at the moment. But it's like tangible benchtop AI, which is going to come out and actually help us.

It'll rank things first it'll help us choose embryos a little bit better, but we'll still have to have embryologists that will actually look over the results. You know, it's like, a driverless car, will we allow complete control over it? You know, like a driverless car, we'll still have to look at this you know, this data to help us. That will be an improvement because now, you know, you'll know about time-lapse and time-lapse imaging, which is a fantastic way forward is a better way to incubate, it's undisturbed, but to choose an embryo, an embryologist may spend, you know, a much longer time if they have time looking over these images and trying to choose, which is the best embryo, it may call over one of his colleagues and have a debate purely because you have the luxury of seeing the video of that sense. So all these new technologies we talk about in our initiative. But it, talks about so much more it's really addressed to clinic staff We have a slight majority of embryologists, but also clinicians and lab managers follow this initiative.

We usually have them once a week. It's become very popular, but we do the whole gamma of the IVF industry. So we do like the cutting science. Okay. What's happening with new articles and practices. We can then do about new innovations. So again, we do about what's new on the market, but we've also touched on the field of embryology and looked at things that concern them, like quiet governance which is of course affecting everyone with a recent or failures, which are happening, everyone's paranoid to say the least about getting things right. We've looked at staffing levels. We've done a survey which was awarded which has been awarded at the fertility 2022 for its work.

We looked at mental health in an international survey, which I think I sort of touched on beforehand, but there's a lot of data in there. There's a lot of data that we know now about the psyche of the clinical embryologist. And then of course we've done a few webinars as well, which have looked at animal reproduction.

Okay, cloning stuff, which you know, is interested people. I think they do our job, which can, if can add that to your daily speaking with the patient, giving you a weird and wonderful, explanations from nature, then that's quite good, really. And we've even gone off piece and had people from NASA that had spoken to us because as you know, every five minutes people are popping into space nowadays and there will be productive houses with that.

There's micro gravity. There's a radiation problems and it's not been discussed. So people are doing experiments on sperm and embryogenesis in space which I think are interesting, not just as an embryologist, but the lessons they learn can she help some of the medicine here on earth as well.

 So we've done about everything cause you can see.

[00:22:02] Griffin Jones: When did you start? 

[00:22:04] Giles Palmer: We started just as the pandemic hit, actually the start of 2020. And it was Dr. JacquesCohen who got us all together. He felt, you know, and is a great visionary. So he thought that embryologist would need someone to talk and and to discuss things, especially as you know, there were like furloughed in, at home and in this uncertainty.

And he got together with Thomas Elliot of ivf.net. Who's a bit of a it wizard and he set up a website and they had the idea to have these like webinars. And of course, everyone has been doing webinars, but I think we've done something a little bit special. They've been very popular and to go with those two, Dr. Zsolt Peter Nagy.

Okay. And they look at like the scientific content of everything. And then we've had Mary Ann who's been with us in the IVF industry for a long time. Shaista Sadruddin as well. She helps out and Colin Howles, of course, who's quite a well-known figure in the pharmacy world.

So that's the core band, if you like, but we've been helped with, you know, so many people in the IVF industry, so many people have wanted to help us.Dr. Liesl Nel-Themaat has helped us out, Dara Berger, Alison Campbell, another person from the UK. And two others, Alison Bartolucci and Kelly Ketterson have all sort of helped behind the scenes to make these things a success.

[00:23:24] Griffin Jones: You mentioned that you have it's embryologist heavy, but you have a number of clinicians and physicians and lab managers, what kind of crowds are you? Are you getting now that the pandemic is now that people are on zoom every second of the day, like they were in March and April of 2020 about what's a average crowd for you?

[00:23:45] Giles Palmer: Well, we got about an average 600 to 800 people, every webinar I'm told is pretty good, especially as like companies that hold webinars you know, don't do very well at all, but it's because it's because it entertaining, you know, yourself and then your interview skills are fantastic.

You have to make people buy into the time that you want to give them, you know, they're working hard, it's their own personal time. Okay. You know, it's gotta be something that they want to listen to. And you know, and we have topics where I think people want to listen to, you know it's got the scientific core but it's also entertaining as well.

You know, no one wants to finish you know, like a long day and listen to like a commercial yeah. You know, on a certain project, you know at the start of the pandemic, of course it wasn't much higher. We were having over a thousand people attend but it's like leveled off to the numbers, which I've said.

And then of course it's put on the website afterwards and then many thousands watch it on demand as they say. Yeah. 

[00:24:40] Griffin Jones: Are they mostly coming from the UK and Europe? What's your distribution? 

[00:24:45] Giles Palmer: I'd say it's over half from North America. Okay. And then after that it sort of pretty similar numbers, but I wouldn't say that you know, too many people from the UK, watch it shame on them, but I say it's like north America and then the rest are all very similar.

You know, we've got UK as well, obviously. We've got a great following from. And now in India, usually the tone that we show these webinars, it's like 11, 12 o'clock at night, but thankfully that, you know, they stay up to listen to it as well. We do have them on other times if you never time to time, but the time we usually have them, which is 3:00 PM Eastern it's sort of our slot.

So we're quite pleased that we've got, you know, like a global following. 

[00:25:24] Griffin Jones: So, what are some of the insights that you've gleaned in the last few months? Because on this show, I talk about the business side of the field. And when I have lab folks on and talk about the business side of the lab, but I'm not having any sort of topics on about the latest techniques on ongoing to date by her beyond glasses.

And I'm not, you know, I'm not covering hatching. 

[00:25:47] Giles Palmer: Yeah, I'm not sure, but you know what it is though, but you know what it is you see, and that's the thing. And we'd still have people who own a clinic who we may want to dip into you know, webinars, just because it's much more practical experience. So you'd have someone talking perhaps about hatching blastocysts isn't it, you know, as you said, but it will say, it may be in a. terrible discussion where you've got people from, you know, leading clinics all over the world and they're talking about, well, I do like this and I do like that. So it'll perhaps, you know, help them sort of manage either their workload or their sort of plan about how they want their clinic to go.

 So that's what they gleaned from it, you know, that, you know and we have a large, we have a very large, let's say following, we have over 18,000 members, but that doesn't mean that they watch it every week. Of course, you're going to have like a subset of people that are going to be interested in, you know sperm and similarities.

Now, even if. 20% of those watching it, then that's a very, that's a really big number. You know, other people who are interested in like the tech side of it are going to be that and other people, which are medicine are going to fall from that field. So, you know, by having a large net, if you like and being global, we can get the numbers, which are quite envious in anyone's book I think.

[00:27:00] Griffin Jones: Especially for people that want to talk to embryologists right now. So who can join? Is this, is this a membership that people have to sign up for?

[00:27:08] Giles Palmer: Anyone can join. It's completely free and heal and it will always be free. We have an electronic membership card, which is quite good that you can put it on your phone.

So we've noticed that you know, that Evan has email overload and sometimes, especially with webinars. So we have a lucky little app if you like, but it's, but it's a membership card which will tell you where the next session is coming up and there'll be various offers on. And you'll be first to know about certain things.

So that's what we do and that's how they hear about it. We've got the website, which is IVFmeeting.com, which has the back lobby of all the talks. And we don't just have the, like the whole webinar. We also have them sort of cut up into each single lecture. So we're finding that even like master's students or I should say in a master's course, the teachers is telling the master's students to actually, you know, go and watch session 66 or go and watch you know, the topic on this.

So, you know, it's quite an archive of like, current topics there. And we do delve into, you know, the, you know, the business side of things sometimes, you know, the management side, as you said, within a very successful. 

[00:28:14] Griffin Jones: Yeah, but session coming up it by the time this episode is out, your session may have aren't fast, but I see you have a session coming up on corporate IVF.

[00:28:23] Giles Palmer: Yeah, I think it's very exciting. It's a very exciting time that we live in and you know, the clinics are just the preserve of like a single doctor or a group of doctors anymore. You know, these, you know, this is big business and to be quite honest, I think it does need to go into the biotech arena.

So we're getting these large companies more so in North America, but most centers in the UK now are, there's only about three or four, you know, like groups, if you like small in comparison, perhaps to ones in the states. 

[00:28:52] Griffin Jones: Is that across the board of Giles? Now there's three or four major groups, but are there still boutique centers in different markets or it's almost everyone owned by those three or four groups?

[00:29:04] Giles Palmer: There's still a boutique. There's still boutique in Europe. There are very much boutique markets now. Okay. Save a few, you know, like IVI, and Eugin still, they are the, you know, the end of the preserve of like a group of doctors. But I think the writing on the wall, you know, I think it's a good model.

It's a good business model. It's good for quality. It's good for results. It's also good because you know, all the research nowadays is going to come from private companies in the states. There's no money, which is given to embryo research at all. Okay. Although there is funding, you know, for other forms of medicine.

So it's going to be the antidote is going to be the conglomerates that are going to have the mic to do this, you know, and that again is going to be like a coward that is going to attract, you know, like embryologists that want to do that work, big data, large number of patients. That's where the, you know, that's where the research is going to come from now a days.

[00:30:03] Griffin Jones: That's the argument for corporate IVF. There's also arguments against it. And I have both perspectives come on my show. are you going to have a debate in your topic on corporate IVF or what are you going to cover? 

[00:30:18] Giles Palmer: We don't usually have the format of a debate now, you know, there were many other webinars and even, you know, the courses conferences, which do have like a debate.

[00:30:28] Griffin Jones: Neither do I, by the way sorry to interrupt because I want to sidetrack on this because so many, I would love to have a debate on my show because so many people will email me after a certain topic. And they'll say, I can't believe so-and-so said that when I think they're full of it. And I said, well, why don't you come on and share your perspective. No, you know, I can't, well, it would be great if people would.

[00:30:55] Giles Palmer: Well, I mean, I want to hear the, what are the arguments against it now? I'm sure they are, and I can guess that, you know, people think it's not gonna be personalized and whatever. But I just see the writings on the wall, you know, That's the way it's going to be.

[00:31:09] Griffin Jones: So this is the way it's happening over here. And I actually don't know if these metaphors work. Europe or the UK, but in the United States for a hundred years ago, you have a brewery in every city, in town, in America. There was Goebbels in Detroit, there's Genesee and Rochester. There's old style in Chicago and, and some of them are still around and some of them aren't, but every city had its own brewery or a couple.

And then as the century progressed, you had MillerCoors Anheuser-Busch merges the three conglomerates. Then you had south African brewing by Miller and then they walked coolers together. And then, so then you have SAB MillerCoors. Actually, I do think this analogy works in Europe because InBev comes from Europe and then merged with Anheuser-Busch. So now you've really just got two conglomerates that control most of the group, but what did we start seeing in the mid two thousands? The emergence of craft breweries, again in just about every city in America, and then some of them grow and they get bought by the bigger guys and then the middle of the new middle guys are buying the smaller guy.

And then people are starting brand new breweries. And it happens with breweries that happens with local and regional banks. And we also see some of it with fertility centers that this doc was a partner over here, or they worked in an REI division and they got bought and then they went off and they started their own thing.

And now they're growing again. It gobbled up.

[00:32:33] Giles Palmer: So what's the answer. Yeah. So, yeah. So what's the answer, no, I mean you know, you could say if there are these conglomerates. And with your beer analogy, you know, is their choice. But of course there's choice because there's market forces. That's what I think.

And you know, someone's going to offer these things. And you mentioned about like the emergence of these microbreweries. Well, you know, that'll happen again, maybe with IVF, so, you know, all that we are seeing.

[00:32:57] Griffin Jones: We are seeingg it. So I think what I'm saying is the cycle of life is continuing, but yes, it seems to me that the trajectory of most things is consolidation and fragmentation happens with countries, happens with businesses. And so we're seeing consolidation right now, but I also think we're seeing fragmentation and, and niching as well. 

[00:33:18] Giles Palmer: Yeah. But like, while these companies are big, then they get super efficient and they get this big data and that can help the smaller ones in the long run afterwards, you know, it gives them the opportunity to faction out if you like.

[00:33:29] Griffin Jones: If they provide efficiencies. And so come on my show and say, they're not so good at biting efficiency. I've gotten accused of being both. I'm neither. I do think there are pros and cons and I let people say which they think is.

So we've covered a lot. How would you like to conclude most of our audience right now comes from North America, about 75%. But there are some folks outside, I think after the US and Canada, India is our biggest listenership, but we've had listeners from Australia and central Europe.

You speak far more to the lab side, whereas our audience has some lab folks reach out I, how we got connected. But a lot more on the clinician side and the business side. How would you want to conclude with our audience either about what you see happening in the field and what like see, or what you'd like people to know about?

[00:34:22] Giles Palmer: I have to take a moment to think about that. I would just think about saying that what you've said to me now is you know, that you think that you are catering for an audience, which is just mainly north America, perhaps, and many conditions. And I think that we cater for people from the lab side of things, but as our hashtag is, it's like hashtag share the knowledge.

And that's what we did. You know, first of all, and people are watching it because whether it's legal aspects or it's business aspects, as you mentioned yourself, it is coming their way. And you know, we've got 180 countries that follow us and I'm sure you have as well, because they're going to learn something from what you're saying, and they're going to learn something from what we say as well now, maybe they've got different laws and a thing that we have seen. Not just with my, with my day juggles with is that every clinic works differently. Okay. They may have similar protocols, but every clinic works slightly differently, but they have these common problems in each country and each region has a way to solve that.

But you know, the issue of, you know, quiet governance. So what are you going to do with your non-compliant embryos, for example, what are you gonna do about safety? What you know about quality control, what are the legal aspects? What are you going to do about staffing levels? As we mentioned whatever it is, it's coming their way.

We've had some sessions on Treatment of same-sex couples. We've had successes on trans folk, which applies to perhaps my country, UK and yours, more where it is more open and it's more accepted, but as a service towards that many other countries in the world that's an opportunity for many of these people, but it's coming their way.

You know, this globalization is happening and they can learn from you know, like reaching out and having programs like yours, like mine and like others, where they can just see the writing that is on the wall and what is coming up in the future. 

[00:36:11] Griffin Jones: Well, I thank you for coming on to share some of that with this audience.

I hope our audience will come and check out your initiative the international IVF initiative at IVFmeeting.com and we'll link to that in the show notes and hope that they benefit from the insights of the things that are coming their way. Thank you very much for coming on  the show, Giles. 

[00:36:35] Giles Palmer: Thank you very much.


124: How to Increase Patient Satisfaction & Online Reputation with Rony Elias

Rony Elias on Inside Reproductive Health

This week on Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones is joined by Dr. Rony Elias. They discuss how Dr. Elias is able to attain hundreds of positive reviews online by deliberately putting service first and friendship second. Contrary to many popular social media doctors, he believes in firm social boundaries with patients because ultimately, patients are there for a service, not a relationship.

Listen to the Full Episode to learn:

  • How to set social boundaries with patients

  • When you should or should not reach out to your patients

  • How to talk to patients about sensitive topics like weight and age

  • How to increase patient satisfaction whether treatment was successful or not

Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.

Want to put a strategy in place to improve your reputation both online and offline? Visit us at fertilitybridge.com.


Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Rony Elias: They can maybe relate to more on a personal level or so, by the end of the day, they're coming to receive a service. They're not coming to make a friend. They can't, they have a lot of friends. 

 

[00:00:49] Griffin Jones: Today's show I've got Dr. Rony Elias. We talk about patient satisfaction and reputation management. If you just took a sound bite from either side, you might think that Dr. Elias is all about being a warm and fuzzy doc. And on the other side, you might think this is a stone cold rules physician, is likely the balance between those two that has allowed Dr. Elias to be a very highly rated physician. Having hundreds of positive online reviews in several different platforms. I first noticed it in 2015, when he had only been in REI at Weill Cornell for four years after finishing his fellowship in 2011 and that trend continues today.

So we talk about the success that he's had in patient satisfaction and developing so many positive online reviews. And you might take note of the balance that he strikes in this conversation.

 Dr. Elias, Rony. Welcome to Inside Reproductive Health. 

[00:01:50] Dr. Rony Elias: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very much looking foward for this Griffin. 

[00:01:54] Griffin Jones: The nature of today's episode is the nature of the same way you and I met. I don't know, but you were one of the earlier docs that I met in the fertility field had moved back to the United States in 2015.

And that was probably the year that we met and I came to see you in your office and I was trying to think of how well, how did we connect in the first place? And I'm pretty sure it's this topic of patient satisfaction. And online reputation, which dovetails where more of my space. And, and you had won a good one back then, and then I just checked up on you again this morning.

I was like, oh, darn Rony is doing really well. And so let's start really broadly. Because there's some thing that causes patients to say that they love you and not just do that, but do so in mass. And there was a difference there because there's a lot of people whose patients love them, but they don't always say so publicly in mass.

So let's start with what you believe the tenets of patient satisfaction are. What do you think it critically boils down to? 

[00:02:59] Dr. Rony Elias: Again, thank you for having me. Actually, I remember when we first actually met, you had to reach out to me and I find the model to be like amazing. I didn't know that there's anybody like it was out there, like looking to just focus on fertility social media, marketing, all of this other stuff.

I think we contacted when I had first started that point out. Actually I never moved outside the country. I was always here, but I was just starting my practice consignors later. And that's when you contacted them the same thing you asked me, like. I don't want to be too foot philosophical, but I think to simplify it, Since when I was a med student, I always felt that it's kind of a matter of pure luck that I'm on this idol, this side of the bed, meaning any day I could be the patient any day, I could be the one struggling for infertility men, women, whatever.

So I just try as much as possible to put myself in their shoes. What do they expect from that provider or from that healthcare provider? Whatever. What do they expect? What would I have these. And I think even when the fail over and unfortunate negative cycle, are there just being, putting yourself for two seconds only?

Like what would you want the other person to tell you when there is that bad news? And obviously when there is a good deal, it's easy. I think that's what made me make the patient more. Being more grateful whenever I tell them about the first negative cycle. And obviously whenever they have the positive results and they can even advertise it more, but what keeps them and the practice and they feel like they just did not just another, , like another number, essentially.

Like what everybody's saying. I think it's being in their shoes is very like simple, but at the same time, it's very hard to do, especially when you have a lot of people that you be in that you have to be in their shoes everyday. 

[00:04:44] Griffin Jones: So you're trying to be empathetic to what they expect and expectations can be divided into circumstantial.

There are people that have different expectations based on their personality types. And then maybe there are some things that are universal. Do you see some universal expectations that fertility patients expect that it doesn't really depend on personality type? These one or three things are what every fertility, patient expects from you?

[00:05:13] Dr. Rony Elias: I think every patient in general, they're coming for you the same way you go to, I mean any other, you go to a plumber, you want them to fix your, your toilet. You're going to fix your, your bathroom. You're not looking to become friends with them. So they're coming to you to help them with their care. Once you provide this help, as much as you can.

I think from this point on that they can maybe relate to more on a personal level or so, by the end of the day, they're coming to receive a service. They're not coming to make a friend. They can't, they have a lot of friends they're not. So I tend to always focus on. Many of them who we have to do share I'm in the age group where many of them are similar to my age or a little bit younger that we happen to have common friends they're sent to me by friends or something.

I type to always avoid to interact with them socially, till when their kid is over, although many of them would say, well, how about we do something together with your wife with this, especially the one that even have kids before they come in for a second. If I tried to avoid that because why they here is for this and that's universal. Every patient is coming to receive certain care and you have to provide that. Then you go to the next level. Then you can try to be funny, can fact associate interact with them, whatever, once you give them what they can do for that's. I think the common denominator for all patient, not patients coming to make a friend, you know, they would like to have a friend as a buck.

They're coming to get the care. 

[00:06:39] Griffin Jones: I want to talk about that a little bit, because I've always felt that way. Even when I was earlier on in business, I could feel someone was too interested in what I was selling or offering because of my personality, because they got along with me, they thought I was funny.

They thought it was a good guy. Yeah. And I really try to not lead with that. And because I found problems when I did that earlier on, you know, people were buying Griffin Jones, Fertility Bridge for the guy with beard and the haircut and the cool ideas and the red pants. And, you know, they just had this idea of whatever it was that I did.

But then when it came time to servicing them, they weren't buying into a process. They had some idea in their mind and, and it wasn't an into a process. And so I then sometimes aired the other way, Rony where people are like, you know, you're almost like a ** in the sales process.  I try not to be so strict, but I do. If we're not getting to business first, then I worry that we're not going to be able to have a good social relationship later. And so I just want to make sure that I can serve people and if not, we can be friends outside. But so talk to me about how you don't go too far to where you're just it's all business or do not try to mitigate that.

[00:07:55] Dr. Rony Elias: No, I mean I am hundred percent agree with you. I think that the personal parts was the cherry on top. Like I tried it, it is hard, especially like I said, because socially I'm at the age, but still some of them are coming friends to somebody else. Anyway, I actually prefer not to see those patient essentially.

You know, if I feel like if it's gonna become like, you know, my sister-in-law or something, I definitely want to see you. I was not somebody else, but a friend of a friend, you know, I try to, they try subconsciously to, to divert you into somewhere else. Like for example, I can give you an example of a patient of mine.

She had failed multiple times after the first cycle. After the second cycle she became pregnant with us and it happened that they have a very close friend. It's a friend of mine. We have been to spend a year with together. We were, this is like four or five years ago. We spentthe years and we share a phone number and I have to give them my phone number.

We share phone number. Now I show they've done with their family you know, having children a year and a half later the hospital each out for me has my phone number. I have my Facebook on my Facebook then, hey, how are you? We want to go? I didn't respond to that. It's a message on Facebook. I didn't respond to that.

And then finally he emailed me. I just am sure I CC somebody in the office. So I just, patients subconsciously are going to want to go there because they also want a friend, especially when something's stressful and all of that. And they felt like, but now that they become back a patient, I had to shift my mindset to back to being you deal with my office, you come in there and then sure. I asked her about how they're doing socially. I may ask this for everybody, especially now with COVID how you guys knowing how you're coping all of that. So you have to show some empathy, but you know, the interactions shouldn't be through those other platforms or through personal connection.

Like, you know, especially that this is very private, what we do. I mean, you know, it's very private, like, you know, for them, for me, for everybody, I mean, so many times some patients. This is an or close friend to my wife. That's how they came to me. I don't even tell them, I don't even mention it to my wife that, you know, and you have to really make that mental switch that this is one thing and that's something very different.

 And then regroup at the end. If the outcome was successful if they stopped here. I mean, some of them do stuff. They don't push it, not successful, but I think they appreciate that. They appreciate that. 

[00:10:13] Griffin Jones: Is this contrary to conventional wisdom or is it conventional wisdom?

And it's contrary to maybe what's popular about the idea of bedside manner right now. I think there's some people listening and they think, yeah, well, I tried to do that. I tried to, to address the issues first and to. To make sure that we understand everything and to show how we can help. And then I'm more personable because that's what I understand to be professional, but then I'm getting lit up on reviews because people are saying that my bedside manner is cold.

And meanwhile, there's all of these physicians on social media specialties that seem like influencers, they're like people you want to hang out with and that's part of their personal brand. So is what you're talking about is it contrary to what people are consuming of?

[00:10:59] Dr. Rony Elias: We do not need to cut into practice across the board.

I think not just infertility, but so many other different thing. I think it is contrary to that, but maybe this is the, maybe that's how a fortunate in my reviews, maybe I see all my patient that they saw that I'm kind of like different with that now by no means you should be. Not like not showing empathy, don't care for patient because not just because I personally care, but again, I remember what I said earlier.

I keep it up other patients just before we spoke today, there's a patient of mine who had a successful outcome. She's pregnant. She's with her OB she's four months pregnant. I'm not allowed to see her medical now because we don't carry him out of practice past 12 weeks. She's 13 weeks. I got a message today at an email that's a 40, she was Adobe and there was no heartbeat. I grabbed the phone and I call her, see how she's doing. I told her what I advise next, not to be discouraged because I mean it, you know, like I, like, I mean it, and also it's fair for her to hear. She reach out to me. I didn't look around. If she had told me if it was social media or whatever, I mean that wouldn't be the way to go, you know, but back to your point, I don't want to kind of like diverse too much, but yes. That's how many practitioners or in any industry, not just in medicine, you just follow the trend, the social media they're friendly. He's funny. They do all of that like there is a reality shows about this, it just, I don't think that's fair for the patient and it's definitely not my personality, but you mentioned also something about the code. I just recently heard of, I have a group of patient that are actually from overseas, that they come here just for their care because they had failed multiple times in their own country or in Europe.

And I just have a certain buildup of those patients that come in here and they happen to reside in one building because the company who sponsors their stay has a building that they put them in it. So they all talk essentially. And I heard from a nurse, the nurse that go provide their care. They said, they all love me.

That's why they even sent their relatives and whatever, but they don't like that. I don't socialize with them because we have the same culture, the same background, this from the middle east, et cetera. And I think if I did that, if I did the opposite. You know, like I wouldn't have had the same quote-unquote success or following up because they didn't come here to make.

It will be nice, but I didn't. So, but she mentioned something which I'm starting to work on, is that when I'm seeing them, you tend to be a little bit quicker to visit. They would want to spend more time now, now it's COVID I cannot spend a lot of time inside the patient inside with the patient inside the room, but that's something that I start to say, maybe I should, you know, I tend to feel like, Hey, you're here for this care.

I'm addressing it, et cetera. Once they start to do go about other stuff, maybe I should take a little bit more time to address that not to feel that quote person, but I'm not going to be their friend at least for the time being until they finish there care.

[00:13:55] Griffin Jones: So you're appreciating the perspective of the patient is that they're coming to you for a problem. They could do a number of different things to make other friends. Most of them have plenty of friends and they're coming to you to solve a very serious problem. And it's your job to address the case at hand and to explain how you're going to solve that problem. So how do you do that? The first time that you meet someone? How do you set the stage of this is how this relationship is founded?

[00:14:24] Dr. Rony Elias: I mean, first I heard that directly and indirectly from any patient, I take a lot of number 50 with all of the records aspects.

Sometimes more than like if there's 200 pages and I go over every single thing, the relevant stuff and the kind of not relevant stuff. And I make sure that they know that I went through that. Many of them went to multiple cycles before, no matter where those were done. They're very valuable. You cannot just say, because we're Cornell. We're a big center.

We're not going to look at what other people did, especially if they had partial success or maybe some of them didn't have children so that I make sure that I review it and I mentioned it to them and they know that the ambiguity, so I am thought they could be from my home country, from my town, from other, I don't go over like which school you went to, what did you hang out with? And like I said, many of them are more or less than my age or a little bit younger. I leave this at the end of the discussion so that they know that, you know, and I actually, I speak to other languages very comfortably. I speak French and Arabic, and if they are French or Arabic, I just say the hi and bye.

And those things, which is the whole care, the whole medical discussion is done in English basically, you know, assuming they speak English, of course. And then after that, If they start to ask me for occasionally some of the, okay, we get your number, except that I'd like to kind of, you know, just, I was like the best way to reach me, which is to get my email and my assistant email.

Because now I'm talking to you. If somebody has bleeding something urgent, they reach out to me. I'm not going to disrupt this, and it's, and I mentioned it to now, it's like, if I'm doing surgery on you, I'm not going to stop that in order to address somebody who could have something urgent need to be addressed.

So I make sure they understand that the way of communicating is my direct email, you know, as well as always to see my, somebody in my office, the nurse, as well as the medical secretary, Japanese therapist, and et cetera. And I think then they start to feel like this is not like we chose him maybe because of his background, maybe because of he's review, but he's not just focused on that.

He's focused on my care, what I did before and where are we going to go move forward. And lastly, I always make sure to tell him. Which is I believe it, I don't just say I'm very fortunate that I've practiced in this area. We all actually get very fortunate in those where fertility centers are present, that there are like, for example, New York city.

We're fortunate that I think we live here because there are amazing restaurants, amazing hotels and amazing fertility doctor. Many of them, you can just walk across the street. So by me reviewing another, another practice protocol, it's just a different point of view. It's never like, I can't believe they did that. and most of them, they were not happy with the care there.

So you could kind of build on that if you wish. I tried to avoid doing that because I'm sure that other, he or she doctor who took care of them, one of their best interests in mind, it's just that we're not successful. And the opposite is true. And I make sure they know that from the first visit, whenever I'm seeing somebody who did care before, I was like, I'm going to tell you my point of view.

And this is by no means a reflection back on the other places because they should, who are not successful with us or with me, they're going to go there because they're very good and vice versa. And then they feel like I really focused on them. I'm not focused on making myself look better. Of my center or my statistics for the better and et cetera and all of that. 

[00:17:46] Griffin Jones: One of the things you talked about was the delineation of communication. It's not the best place to text you very often. There are some people that are just on every single text, email, phone call. That's how their brain wires, they can respond instantly. Many of us aren't that I'm not one of those people either.

 And if they're asking you some questions, it's lost outside of the chain of communication of the people that can respond to it. If my clients text me and ask me what's going on, it's like, I don't know, let the project manager knows what's going on. The account manager, the project manager knows what's going on with the work that we're doing.

The account manager knows what's going on with you are needs what you're doing. The strategists know what's going on with what they're helping with. They can still text me. Hey, Griff. I just want your advice on this, but even then I have a different phone number to my same phone.

When clients see, I have an iPhone, they're like, why do you show up is green? Because they're going to a separate work phone number so that I can keep that. Because if it's mixed up with group threads of my cousins about the Buffalo bills or to my fiance, then, talk a little bit more about that delineation of communication.

How do you formalize that? 

[00:18:55] Dr. Rony Elias: You do the exact same thing that I do, like, you know, I tend to, however, I respond to email by the end of the day, every single day, I have an OCD seen Red and if you look now at my phone, like on the Gmail or whatever, the email tab you're going to see.

 Like now I just, because we start to talk, I have 14. I can assure you by three, 4:00 PM. They're all gone. They're not basically. So I do respond by that way. If they put something on WhatsApp, I have international patient that I don't know how some of them would able to find my number. And sometimes it's like 9:00 AM and Dubai, it's 2:00 AM here.

 So my phone, I actually sign the Whatsapp communication completely. I only see it whenever I look at. And whenever they like, typically we do the consult, especially in our virtually and I, as of any records that you haven't. I'm going to send you an email, please reply all to CC everybody.

Because if you sent me your blood count, just to me, there is a very good chance. We're going to have to repeat it when you come in. Because I mean, you got like 30, 40 emails sometimes. So they always ask and if they, especially the international ones, they tend to still, despite that reply, just to be reply back to them.

And I put everybody else from your team, like similar to your team, your project manager, et cetera. It's a training exercise and now initially I would miss it sometime. Now. I became allergic to the fact that that's not done. You know, I just like tell the nurse, please make sure you spoke to Mrs so-and-so because she emailed me as supposed to email you or something before I forget. And it is honesty for their best interests. If they, I have occasionally for example, the patient that come in and they want to, I'm part of a group I'm part of we're like 14 different fertility doctor and some patient wants to everything to be done by one person. And I explained for them why that's not for their best interest when it's a big room. It's like, you don't want me to be doing an ectopic pregnancy at 6:00 AM in the morning and come to your retrieval at nine, you know, and I think that's also something that you have to train the patient to understand that, it's for your own interests to have things divided appropriately.

And whenever you have a problem for somebody to focus on it, obviously it's going to be me in your day to day activity. But if something urgent, don't just reach out to me. Especially not like on social media or anything like that. Most of them don't actually I have to say. 

[00:21:25] Griffin Jones: So you are setting the stage for how the process of communication is going to go.

Do you set the stage of your personal philosophy, meaning in the very first minutes of your first consult with a patient, do you say, look, I understand a lot of people like to be friends. I really enjoy my patients and I do like getting to know them, but I'm very focused on getting to business first because I want to make sure that I serve.

Do you do take like a minute or two to set the stage? 

[00:21:55] Dr. Rony Elias: I don't directly like that, but I think indirectly, they probably understand that early on, most people don't want that. They want it, like you will attract them if you do that. But I don't think they expected early on. They might expect it that later on and the middle of the care or something.

Now the one that are, this is at the 90% of the patient. The one that are really like came to you through a personal contact, I tried to ask them to the least amount of like, for example, somebody who just came to me because they want a doctor and a little bit, and they find me, I asked them, where do they live?

 When they come to the visit, I ask them if they have children or whether they shouldn't go to school, et cetera, the one that they came personally because I kind of know that I don't really pretend to ask them those questions. I try not to ask them to social question, to let them mindset focused, you're here just for that, you know, essentially, but I never do it like directly like that. Cause I think there might many of them, I mean, also they might feel like that's kind of a little bit too aggressive and I have to also actually forgot to mention something many of the patient I became very close friends with afterwards.

One of them is actually my very good friends. Some of them became friends with my wife. Like they're very close, but once they finished their care. So I enjoyed was the interaction I have with the patient split, but I don't want this to change why they have to see me. That's the priority. 

[00:23:17] Griffin Jones: So I wouldn't necessarily recommend setting the stage in that way for you because you're doing really well across platforms.

You have a really high rating and coming from dozens, if not hundreds of reviews and that isn't the case for everyone. So if someone is listening and they're thinking everything that Dr. Elias has said so far, I'm doing, and people come on and they say, I'm cold. They say I'm a jerk. And I would say, if that's the case, if that's the type of your response, That you're getting then setting the stage can really be useful and you just end it with, is that okay?

And you pause and you let people digest it even if for a second. And I've seen a lot of success with physicians doing that. Even if they change nothing about their personality, sometimes people can say, listen, I'm not a warm and fuzzy type of doctor. I just want to put that out there. Your care is extremely important to me.

I tend to deliver facts without a lot of social softening. And I tend to be very direct. Is that okay? And people, even if they are not okay with that, at least they know what to expect. 

[00:24:25] Dr. Rony Elias: Yeah. I mean, for those cases. I agree with you. I think setting the tone early on, but also saying why you're not doing it.

It's not that you're not doing it because, I am focused on your care. I think actually, since you mentioned it again, I mean, I haven't checked recently, but I think one of the. And I loaded this actually indirectly. Interesting for you, basically. I never know, because when you mentioned about, I never really looked mad if you, because I know that people are going to be, I have five stars and little Starbucks, but whenever you told me, many years ago, I actually went through a few websites and I did not look at the five stars one.

One I looked at, like, for example, I had one, I forgot what it was 7 out of 10 and I so why now that patient, I remember her very well because she so far had two children with us. When the first child is when she had an ectopic pregnancy and I operated on her and when I finished the surgery, I went, spoke to her husband and her family explained everything. There on she came back into the cycle and she got pregnant before the pregnancy though, she, the one who wrote the seven, she was not happy that I didn't call her the next day. Now in my mindset, did inform them everything I knew. Everything that happened and not that I saved her life, but I help her out with the ectopic this would have been a serious condition.

But since then I'll make sure I call the patient if not the same day, the next day, because I figured this was a mistake on my end. I forgot that if I was a patient, I would want to hear from my doctor, not just from my wife, what the doctors told her. So I looked at this, that I think for those providers or people who are listening, who they feel like they're getting less video.

I think I would look why the patient, if something is unreasonable then of course not. But I would look what they said and don't like, rub it off. So, whatever, she had two children with us where she was denied care at another large academic institution in the Boston area. Like they told her, we won't treat you because you have no chance.

She came back, had a second baby after the first baby. And that if you're still out there, seven out of 10 basic, which is not bad, but still like it was seven out of 10. And, you know, I would ask those people who are listening, who are interested in deliver the bad news yourself and live with the news yourself, not your staff, not your nurse, not you wherever.

And back for her. That was my mistake by not go to answer this, then I'd be calling everybody. And most of them do appreciate it. I mean, it's not, everybody's like, oh, thank you for checking. Thank you for calling. 

[00:26:50] Griffin Jones: We're talking about patient satisfaction today. And I can't think about patient satisfaction without thinking about EngagedMD. I'm on EngagedMDs website right now, and there's fertility center after fertility center, the UK, the United States, Canada, some are in academic practice. Some are privately owned, some are in larger networks and patient satisfaction has been a result for all of these centers adopting EngagedMD because EngagedMD allows patients to access your learning plan and sign their consent forms on their laptop, on their tablet, on their smartphones. They get to do that at their convenience. It's on their schedule and they get to do that in the comfort of their home.

They can repeat it when they need to. So when they come in to see you, they're getting real care from you because they have that access to you in such a way that you're able to customize that interaction to their needs and they're coming in with a much better educational foundation. So if you want to take advantage of a couple dollars off, if you're one of the few people that still hasn't signed up for EngagedMD, go to engagedmd.com/irh and mention that you heard Griffin Jones talk about them, or you heard them on the podcast and they'll give you 25% off of your implementation fee. That's engagedmd.com/irh.

[00:28:20] Griffin Jones: I'm Interested in where this personal philosophy overlaps with and segues into process, because you were, are talking about your personal philosophy is that we take care of the matter at hand.

And because that's what you're coming for is for me to deliver care and socialists and more, a little bit more of that personal touch comes later and you've talked about how you break that into communication to account for that. So talk a little bit more about process because I'm looking at one of your positive reviews right now, and the person says one of the reasons that I know why he has a big following, I don't have to stay on top of the process, like with other clinics.

And so what is that process to stay on top of? 

[00:29:10] Dr. Rony Elias: I think it's starts on like a set from the transparency from the first visit. Basically make sure that they, I reviewed all your records. This is what I have, and I tell them maybe I missed something, correct me if I'm wrong.

Second is like, when you said, you know, we remain on top of things. That is a constant line of communication with the patient almost on a daily basis in the midst of an IVF cycle. If she ask the nurse a question, I'll make sure I train not to wait till 5:00 PM after sending the message to send me the message right away and I'll respond with it.

So the patient feels that she had a question today it's answered by the end of the day. And I tell the patient, if you don't get an answer by 4:00 PM to call us essentially. And if, for example, somebody who had like today, they should have had an egg retrieval yesterday. Her results were sub optimal today. I got some information from the embryologist before just talking to her and given her results.

You had this result today. I told her why, I think that happened, but I'm going to wait for the final embryologist report before I discuss with it. So she feels like I am on top of it. It wasn't like, wow. I did this stimulation from this point on it's on. And the lab is on your egg and whatever. And lastly, I probably, this is the most important one is whenever they get a negative pregnancy test, which is basically the, the measure of success in what we do, I'd like to call them myself either before the nurse or the same day.

I don't wait like five days later or something, but now I'm sure some days I didn't do that because I finished late or there was something, or my aunt. If they're positive, the nurse could call them before me. Those everybody wants to hit up, but once you hit a negative result, you want to add whenever you call them with that, you ideally want to have some, some idea by future, not just to give them false hope, but to tell them that, you know, you're on top of that case. Again, it wasn't like, well, just try again. We're going to do the same thing over again. 

[00:31:11] Griffin Jones: It sounds like there's a lot of manual who involvement from you, even if it's not from you, it's directing your staff. And so how does that work? You mentioned that you're in a big group and you have many other physicians.

How does that work? When one physician has a process, but maybe it is, or isn't the same as the other docs in a bigger group? 

[00:31:34] Dr. Rony Elias: That's a tricky question and it's a very good point. Now what I tell patients patient, because patients ask the same question every day. I look at every single patient of my increment, seven days a week, even when I'm not here, because we have now with the iPhone, with all of that we can log in.

So I do micromanage my patient behind the curtain everyday. So there is a certain place in the chart that is, I actually communicate to the nurse typically by one or 2:00 PM because the results are back what to tell the patient at that point. But I do tell the patient also because we are the back group, don't expect it.

I'm going to be able, I'll try to do your retrieval if I'm available, but that's not the most important part of the patient because there is so many of us and. We're all trained here because we all do a lot with all very experienced with that technical park, essentially. Like, you know, but the actual, which is the patient understands, once you mentioned it, you tell them, you know, like everybody does a lot every day. Everybody's trained. They think this is the critical part. It's actually not this particular part. Managing the cycle, not as much doing the actual physical, the retrieval or embryo transfer in a big group, but people are experienced, right. So you're not doing it. You're not having first year resident doing something like that.

So I think that's what it comes down to like on those 14 days, let's say leading up to your managing the certain days of them. And it's the last day that somebody else and the date of their fertilization is off. Meaning the day after the retreival either me or my direct nurse is calling them and telling them what I was going to tell them if I could get ahold of them, like I quite had four patients yesterday.

I called three of them already. The first one, by the time her results were back, I didn't have just a called her yet. 

[00:33:18] Griffin Jones: When does physician preference overlap? When does it become something that should be adopted as a process wider within a group? Like hopefully no group is saying. Is laying down every guideline of the way physicians should communicate with patients that has to be up to the physician but at a certain point. Wow, this really is necessary for our process. So we should adopt this into the page. Like there should be a step that happens in the patient portal or we should adopt another software or a two because this, these two doctors are doing this so frequently, manually. We should just get this software for the group. When does physician preference become a process that, that should at least be pitched to the wider group, if not adopted, by the wider group. 

[00:34:06] Dr. Rony Elias: I think it depends on all parties involved, meaning the patient, the doctor, and the supporting staff. Meaning if you have a lot of patients, you have to do that.

I mean, you're just gonna miss things something. If the doctors prefer that, which like in our group, 14 doctors, maybe 10 of them to something like that, four of them, four of them do not. You know, they typically the more senior one, the less busy one, et cetera. And obviously they're amazing doctor people come from all over to see them, but they haven't. And certain as importantly is, which I find it, most nursing said supporting staff. They would want something like that. Like they want that, that could, because the nurse was also like, you know, it's a lot when things are documented, especially if the nurse covered two different doctor, that varies is a little bit in the way that practice, you know, you would want to know, you're not going to be remembered.

You know, when you have, I mean, we do like more than 5,000 IVF cycles a year. Almost a hundred thousand visits a year or something like that, like between the different providers. So I think when, when you're going to have to start somewhere, I think either the patient dictating and the doctor being open-minded to do that.

And obviously I think the nurses that hold onto supporting staff should that the board on that I'm just fortunate that, you know what I mean, I'm busy enough to need to have to do that, to simplify my life and for safety. My nurses loved that. And I adopted it since whenever, you know, like we have the electronic system in place and I tried to do more and more and more and more.

[00:35:34] Griffin Jones: So what if it's about process that requires resources and this is kinda my obligatory time to always I do have a little bit of skepticism of the freedom of. REI is in academic institutions. I don't believe that it's as draconian as it can sometimes be described, but I do know that when I talk to people on face value, they're always the ones that get to decide everything.

And then, you know, you, you peel the onion a little bit, and there's a lot of red tape. And an example that I talk about on the show is EngagedMD and full disclosure. I'm a sponsored for the audience listening and they sponsor our show. But they do because it's something it's like, man, that's just such an easy win.

Like that's something that people, everybody should use. Not everybody's even able to make that decision. That's one, I think of another. I remember being in an actually in your office. This was several years ago. And I saw a magazine there and it just said, you know, property of Weill Cornell.

And I was thinking, oh Lisa Duran patient experience consultant would say, you know, never do that. So is like, well, is that a decision they can make or is the decision to hire a consultant like Lisa, a decision they can make? Like, so what about when you really believe in something. But, and, and it's part of the process that you feel is necessary to have patient satisfaction at this level, but it requires resources.

[00:37:00] Dr. Rony Elias: I wish you, you know what I mean, I agree with you. You are right. I'm not going to like, get, are when you're an academic face, even academic based, but get in a private place. And you're not the senior person or the partner, there is a limit on something that you can or cannot do. But I think with what we were talking about earlier, It's not a major thing basically. It just evolved maybe more work on my end too. I talked to the ITT develop, something in our, we all use epic. We have a software that actually web design it's called IVF for windows. It was designed back in 2000, 20 years ago. It's just for us, so we have four of three or four it guys that worked just for our department.

So they don't have to go anybody to add something in it. So that part I was able to get. But if it comes back to something like this set up at the magazine or marketing or advertising, I have to go to the higher up. And unfortunately many of them do not agree with what I would say less senior people are willing to do that just from a different mindset.

And you're right. That's a challenge. That's a challenge across the board. And I don't really know other than. Trying to navigate the system. I don't know if there is a theater answer here, how you can just force somebody to do something that they're not used to, although it's very helpful. 

[00:38:21] Griffin Jones: 153 positive Google reviews on one listing alone, seems like it would be leveraged in a conversation like that, you know, in terms of.

If there's something that you feel is really important for the group to do, you do at least have, you know, it's not randomized control, but you at least have something that's more quantifiable than anecdotal data that says this might work. 

[00:38:49] Dr. Rony Elias: You're right. I tried, to be honest with you. I tried, with this stuff, I tried.

Do you remember back then when we met with you, we still don't have anybody who does anything for us. Like oldest reviews that all personally, like they're not microbes or managed by anybody behind the curtain. They're not even like, you know, like they're just, they just happen. So I think this is the tip of that, where there's a lot way to get somebody, you know, how to manage it better.

Even the marketing, like, you know, if you look at more specific to our website. I mean, it's, it's bad. I think the reason why you have this is because of the medical kit, not because of that other stuff. And ideally I can keep trying, which I tried before, but now that we opened this discussion, it just going to make me ask again, but I really, I don't know how to convince the higher up people, unless my title change and I became charged or something like that, then it will happen overnight, but that's a long way. 

[00:39:45] Griffin Jones: Yeah, I think there's some things that are pure marketing. It's pure just getting people in the door and it's, it's a little bit less relevant when people are coming to an institution, but then there's other things I've talked about this when I had Dr. Amanda Kallenon the show from Yale and pretty much every guests that I have from an academic institution. I talk about this is that there is an overlap between what used to be business development and what is now the standard of care. And I put something like patient experience consult as a part of that, you know, it used to be, oh, it was just kind of a nice thing to call people by their first name and have everything ready for them when they walked in the door.

Get people to recommend the practice more, to get people in to get more new patients. But now it's not about getting more new patients. It's just, that's part of building rapport to deliver care or something like EngagedMD where it's, this is how we prepare our patients in order to be better educated so we can use the resources of our staff for them.

And so that overlap is something that I think I think are vulnerable to. Institutions, but let's try to make this useful for the people, assuming that they're on the end, where they can't make many of those decisions. What are some of the things that you would leave docs with that they can they have within their control, whether it's tied to any kind of system or process or not?

[00:41:11] Dr. Rony Elias: I mean, there's certain as much direct communication with the patient. Like I said, calling them not everyday, but calling them with the big results, positive tests, negative tests, miscarriages, et cetera, calling them after surgery. That's when people said no, but no academics. Call it or don't call or something. I think that it's just making me think of, obviously there's a lot of feeds do that already, but one of my favorites, one where actually the one from patient who were not successful, but they still live a commended me that actually really like, you know, had a special place in my heart. base the fact that, or getting letters or getting holidays card from patient who were not successful or for example said, I had a patient who I did surgery on her. She didn't multiple IVF. Didn't get pregnant. Did embryo donation get pregnant and made sure to reach out to me and telling me and other patients.

So I think, you know, being communicating with them directly, that's not everyday. Cause that's. It's impossible to do, basically. I think that's in your own hand. The other thing I'm just trying to think of something else that you could do is link up the expectation early on. I think telling the patient who is 45 years old, that the chances of you getting pregnant using your own eggs early on is this, it sets up the expectation somewhere versus patient expect one you have to be really different and that you have to make sure the patient understand this is not a mistake of her own. This is nothing that she could have done. That that's also something that you could do early on. This is human physiology, and this is the expectation you might do better than your average, but the average is such essentially, and actually ready important to what I do quite often, whenever something.

I told her I'm one of 40 people. I'm going to present it to the group and I'll come back to you with what everybody else was going to say. If they're going to say something different and I'll make sure I tell her when that's going to happen and to expect the call for me by that day. And it's not to each back, I do this very often for patient who 35 years old was they didn't get pregnant after two cycles, but everything else looked fine and make sure to do it internally.

And I encourage them. If they want to seek another opinion, everybody should be humbled. And I asked them. If you don't mind FTC telling me what they tell you, because maybe there's something I would learn from that. And that's not very common because typically most of those patients that come to us that are not pregnant, did fail multiple times.

They're not really the first, but occasionally patient goal, traveled to another state or something and get a second opinion. Or now remotely, they do it. What would I do? I mean, I have a patient now that she failed multiple plants before she did one cycle with us also. Unfortunately, didn't get pregnant.

She's actually doing donor egg from a center in Europe. But she has to do the monitoring with us, very happy, like the fact that she must, like, I didn't give her any positive outcome. She unfortunately didn't get pregnant, but she still wants to come do her monitoring here versus any other doctor that's around or the original doctor that she did with him.

That is also local. So that's also something that you could just. I think because I laid up the expectation early on, I retained her in a way essentially to, and I hope she's got pregnant with a donor and I think she was ended actually credited with that also. 

[00:44:31] Griffin Jones: What about those, those expectations that can be landmines for negative reviews?

Like the example of the prognosis of the 45 year old patient, I sometimes read negative reviews that say, this doctor called me old, or if it has to do with BMI, this doctor called me fat. And in many cases, I don't see that doctor saying those words. It certainly can be the case that some doctors may be crass.

 But in many cases, I think it's being. A totally different way than it's being delivered. And so how do you navigate that? 

[00:45:02] Dr. Rony Elias: I think it's all how you word it. In other words, if you tell somebody I tend to use the word age group, I was like in your age group, this is what we expect and this is keep in mind.

This is not diabetes. It's not cancer, not type it. This is not a disease. This is a human physiology in your age group. The average is this. And you have your average results. This is what I expected to do more or less unacceptable, same thing when it comes with the BMI. I don't really stress too much about it because there is obviously it's better for everybody to have a normal BMI for many health benefit, but between asking the patient to lose that a hundred extra pounds and waiting those two years for the female patient, basically, that's going to have a major impact on her egg, quality, et cetera. So there is a fine line where you can use that within a certain BMI that we typically don't see above it in what I practice.

 I agree with you. I don't think that most, if not all doctors say in your age or because you're old and et cetera, but I told them I tend to tell them actually, you know, your age as much as better than me, you know, your age and in this age group, this is what you should expect.

If you ask me, I want to do this once and all options at the table, of course, I would advise you to do it on an act, but that's a personal decision. You have to be comfortable with it. I didn't choose your partner. And I cannot tell you to choose donor egg, but to go through it. I don't want you to feel like we're dragging you into something with a certain success, knowing that you, you know, those are the us, and this is by no fault of your own.

You did not do anything wrong. This is humeral production and that's how it works. And then I think most patients. Kind of feel that not one of the times they didn't cause this, this is not, they didn't same thing. When I actually same thing along the same line, when patient have a miscarriage, I was like, before you asked me, you could not have caused that.

Except maybe if you smoked like crazy before you asked me to and they still ask by the way, but you cannot prevent the miscarriage nor cause one early on, and you have to know that. And I keep saying it over and over, over and over. And they still ask, but then they feel like they given them sense of relief.

Same thing with the age, nobody causes that age to be what they are. And you and I also another word, another sentence that I use comedy, which I also believe in the best time to get pregnant is when you get pregnant. It's not what I tell you. It's not what your mom tells you. It's not when your partner tells you, if you were not ready at 35 and now you're 42 and your ready. Now, it was a time to get pregnant. You know, if you're ready at 25, you would force that that's not good for you for the pregnancy for et cetera. And I think that makes many patients that kind of flight feel like, okay, I didn't do anything wrong. It is what it is. I'm going to do my best. 

[00:47:42] Griffin Jones: Yeah, those are two really actionable pointers.

I hope people get some wisdom from there. I didn't make a distinction earlier on in the show that I'm going to make now because at our company, it's official point of view that patient satisfaction and online reputation are not exactly the same thing. Online reputation overlaps with patient satisfaction, but there are ways to get representation on online reputation one way or the other, that aren't always representative of the entire patient population. And then there's also things that you have to do with online reputation to maintain that online. But it's not the same as patient satisfaction. Do you use any kind of patient satisfaction measure, a press Ganey and net promoter score?

Any of those? 

[00:48:51] Dr. Rony Elias: Not me specifically, but the center or the IVF center, they do that, but they tend to do that as more so I don't know how to kind of like explain it better, but we have the patient who is seeing there respective doctor, which we have different offices in my case, it's the office in Westchester and occasionally the one in the city.

But there's also when they kind of go through the IVF cycle when they go through that, let's say hospital essentially. So that's more so for the hospital part, the students with the IVF, with the billing with all of that, that goes, they don't really direct them towards the each specific physician, which now that you mentioned, I think we also should.

Maybe also look at specifically each of their doctor's office and practices within the bigger umbrella, they tend to be just for the bigger umbrella. 

[00:49:16] Griffin Jones: How do you want to conclude about the topic of patient satisfaction? Knowing that our audience is, it comes from a cost of fertility field, but it's really heavy on physicians.

So how would you want to conclude with that? 

[00:49:27] Dr. Rony Elias: I would go back to the first point that I said, and it's pure luck that we as a physician, wait on this end of the bed on this end of the table, anything we could be the other hand and it's not just saying it like which we would all use. How would you want to treat your sister or your yourself?

But I really mean it like, you know, once you make that mental note that what would I want to hear? What am I looking at? I think that. The patient will feel your doesn't matter if you socialize with her or not, she feels your friend at that point, you know, you really care about her. I think that's, if somebody could make it and, and it's, it's a practice you have to like, you know, remember that, you know, any day, one of us, all of us could be patient and how would we want to have be delivered the bad news? The good news is easy to deliver. Everybody could deliver them. It's more so the bad news. I think that's how I would advise the physician among the audience. For the patient, all our use our grade, but typically they're to the extreme, there not most people, most people are not going online to reviews.

Most people are taking care of their babies or doing something you know, or focusing on their care. So you should read it, but have the analytical mind to read anything that you see online, you know, it's typically not most people. I mean maybe you mentioned maybe I'm fortunate that most of the ones, you know, It's possible that all of my views are going to be good, but you know, I think most patients are not reviewing online most patient. So I always tell patients the best doctor is the one in our field is the one who gives you a baby, no matter what he's his or her reviews are no matter how much you socialize with him or her, the one, because I gained to my second point, you came for the service and you expect the service to be provided.

Once people provided it's become best friends with them. Don't ever go back to them. That's different, but make sure that all this focus on the chief complaint or the reason why you came in. 

[00:51:26] Griffin Jones: Dr. Rony Elias. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your thoughts about patient satisfaction. I think people are going to get a lot out of it.

[00:51:33] Dr. Rony Elias: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Don't Lose New Fertility Patients Before the First Visit: 9 Steps of IVF Center Lead Conversion

By Griffin Jones and Stephanie Linder

“Marketing throws the ball, but the practice has to catch it,”--Rita Gruber.

Digital marketing and physician referrals lead prospective fertility patients to contact you. Then what?

They move into the second phase of the Fertility Patient Marketing Journey, Leads (New Patient Inquiries) to Initial Consult. And just because prospective patients have submitted a web form or called the clinic, doesn’t mean they actually book. Let’s look at how to fix that.

You may use the term new patient inquiry instead of lead. They are the same thing. A lead is any phone call, web form, fax or chat requesting a new appointment or seeking information prior to scheduling. 

The way in which your staff responds to the first prospective patient interaction, determines the conversion to initial consultation.  If you don’t have the right processes and properly trained people, you lose new patients before they even schedule. 

And the point isn’t just to get them in the door, either.

Positive and negative patient experiences start at the first point of contact - often a phone call or the response to a web form/chat.  Expectations and rapport are built and broken from the very beginning. 

Fertility Bridge estimates that as many as 20% of negative fertility center reviews come from people who haven't yet had a consult. Patient dissatisfaction is often a result of unmet expectations that weren’t set early in the process.

MEASURING CONVERSION % FROM FERTILITY PATIENT INQUIRY TO INITIAL CONSULTATION

Two key performance indicators (KPI) measure how well your fertility center converts leads.

1)  Total # New Patient Appointment

2). Lead conversion % 

Lead Conversion % = New Patient Appointment / Total Leads 

One individual must be accountable for these KPIs.

The Lead Conversion System 

At least 50% of your leads should be converted to appointments.  If it’s less than 50%, you must analyze and revise your system immediately.  This is the system to increase that percentage. 

  1. Dedicate a new patient line

  2. Have a specialized new patient scheduling team

  3. Unify scheduling across offices and providers

  4. Answer the Phone

  5. Offer the appointment 

  6. Book shortest wait list 

  7. Respond to voicemails and web forms within specified time 

  8. Record Lead Interaction

  9. Clearly identify next steps 

1) Dedicate New Patient Line and Form

Current fertility patients and prospective fertility patients have different needs. Having a phone line and an online request appointment form that separates new patient inquiries from current patient call backs allows your staff to better manage both patient types. 

2) Specialized New Patient Scheduling Team

Multi-tasking is detrimental to both lead conversion and patient satisfaction. It can cause frustration when a front desk person has to schedule a new patient call, fetch a medical record, and check in a consult simultaneously.

A dedicated role or team also decreases voicemails, unanswered phone calls and hangups. It reduces the time required for your staff to play phone tag and increases new appointments booked.

3) Unify Scheduling across offices and providers

When prospective patients have to be transferred from (or worse, hang up and call) one office to another, they often do call…another fertility center.  Your new patient call center is responsible for booking every office equally based on availability without preference to an assigned office or doctor.   

4) Answer The Phone

Missed calls are a great source of new patient appointments...for another fertility center. They are also as good for your patient’s experience as your cable company’s phone tree is for you.  Make a plan to hire the adequate number of staff and use data to ensure coverage during the busiest days/hours. 

5) Offer the appointment 

When prospective patients call with questions, most staff members answer the question at face value and go no further.  In order to increase conversion, mandate your staff “ask for the appointment” at least once with every prospective patient, regardless of the question being asked. Consistently offering and asking for the appointment makes an immediate impact on your KPIs, costs $0, and is a process that can be implemented today.  

6) Book Shortest Waitlist 

The longer the wait, the higher the risk of lost appointments, cancellations, and no-shows.

In a multi-physician group, when your waitlist is longer than 4 weeks it is the role of the call center to suggest a doctor with a shorter waitlist. 

Your call center won’t offer earlier slots with a different physician than requested without your blessing. Some docs cringe at this idea. Make sure your staff knows it’s OK and that the most important part is that the patient stay in your clinic ecosystem.  Do you want to be a single provider or do you want to be a practice owner? 

7) Respond to all voicemails and digital inquiries

Avoid being nailed by a negative review that comes from people who’ve never even seen you for a consultation.  Set specific expectations of call back time on your online contact forms’ thank you pages and voicemail. The sooner you respond the better, but you must be able to exceed the expectation. It’s far better for their perception of you to say “you will hear back from us in 72 hours” and get back to them in 48 than to say “you will hear back from us in 24 hours” and get back to them in 36.

You should always follow up more than once, but the cadence of lead nurturing is a topic for another article.

8) Record Lead Interaction

Document your interactions in a customer relationship management software (CRM). Using this data will help you identify drop off, automate follow up, and nurture prospective patients with helpful information.

9) Clearly Identify Next Steps

Before ending the interaction, your new patient team should set three clear expectations about what happens between now and the appointment:

  • Welcome Sequence Correspondence

  • Medical records and patient portal

  • Appt time, correct patient info and acknowledgment of next steps 

CONVERT MORE INQUIRIES TO NEW PATIENTS

We’ve given you an actionable process for converting new fertility patient inquiries to new consultations, but we didn’t talk much about what your team needs to deliver concierge service. How your team responds to these patients is likely even more important than when they do it. 

If you would like Fertility Bridge’s help in improving your fertility center’s lead to new appointment percentage, or how to implement the steps listed above - book a Goal and Competitive Diagnostic meeting below. 

123: 4 Steps to Fertility Business Goal Setting That Speed up Execution with Griffin Jones

123: 4 Steps to Fertility Business Goal Setting That Speed up Execution with Griffin Jones

This week Griffin Jones highlights four steps fertility businesses should use for goal setting to speed up execution. Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. Griffin lays out goal setting from an unique perspective and talks about the goal snowball effect. Listen to this episode to gain a better understanding of how to evaluate your goals based on the investment of time and money they will take to achieve. 

This episode covers: 

  • How to set and attain goals

  • How to prioritize goals

  • What is the goal snowball

  • The 4 steps to goal setting to speed up execution

To learn more about our Goal and Competitive Diagnostic, visit us at FertilityBridge.com


Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee. 


Leadership vs. Delegation in Marketing: A 12 Point Spectrum for Fertility Business Owners

By Griffin Jones

Leadership is a delicate dance for any business owner in the fertility field. For REI practice owners, it might be the Tango.

Striking the balance between leaning in and stepping away can be a struggle for any fertility executive, and there is usually an added layer of complexity that’s unique to physician practice owners.

If we look at the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) accountability chart, we see where a managing partner might find themselves occupying many seats.

Visionary, whether they’ve sorted that role out with their partners or not

  • Integrator, if a Chief Executive Officer or Executive Director doesn’t truly occupy the seat

  • Operations, if they are the Medical, Practice, or Lab Director

  • Physician, oh yeah. Remember your main job? The one for which you undertook fifteen years of higher education and training? That seat falls below the leadership seats under operations. 

Yes, executives of many companies, fertility or not, struggle to step out of many seats. Still, the functions of Medical, Practice, or Lab Director, and especially the role of physician, is a unique charge for physician practice owners.

The accountability chart for fertility practices is its own topic that merits its own article. In this article, we will attempt to get you out of the sales and marketing seat as much as possible.

Even when you properly delegate the sales and marketing seat, there are sales and marketing responsibilities that come with the visionary and integrator seats.

HOTEL SALES AND MARKETING: YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANYTIME YOU LIKE, BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE

What do some of the world’s most iconic brands have in common? 

They had or have CEOs (Blakley, Jobs, Musk, ol’ Walt himself) that propagate the market position of the company in everything they do.

If you’re looking for a book on this topic, David Kincaid’s The Brand-Driven CEO: Embedding Brand Into Business Strategy provides plenty of real-world, current case studies from today’s biggest companies.

Leaders must be involved in positioning and branding because the marketing position of their companies is enforced or betrayed in every area of the businesses.

Because principals (the owner of an REI practice or chief executive of a fertility company) are no exception to the positioning requirement, it’s common to get bogged down in sales and marketing responsibilities that they should be able to delegate.

We don’t want that. If you’re struggling with the question of involvement versus delegation in your fertility company, you aren’t alone. 

We’ve broken sales and marketing responsibilities into a 12-point spectrum you can use to determine when you need to be involved in branding, sales, and marketing initiatives and when you can delegate.

12 POINTS FOR FERTILITY BUSINESS OWNERS

The external and internal presentation of your company is a relay race. You have to make sure the baton doesn’t get dropped as you run from one segment to the next. This means that you can’t go from leading your team to being completely uninvolved in one take. In business, a dropped baton leads to inefficiencies and expensive mistakes. In the fertility field it leads to patients feeling like they were baited and switched.

But, you can step out at certain points once the baton has been successfully passed. This spectrum allows you to ease off without sacrificing outcomes.

When you need to lead:

  1. Positioning

  2. Branding 

  3. Growth Goals

When you need to be somewhat involved:

  1. Brand Development

  2. Growth Strategy

  3. Operational Overlap

When it’s okay to be uninvolved:

  1. Coaching

  2. Brand Activation

  3. Strategy Execution

When it’s time to reinvolve yourself in the marketing process:

  1. Culture 

  2. Brand Refresh, Redesign, and Extension

  3. Accountability of Leadership

When the principal of a fertility practice needs to lead

1. Positioning

Positioning influences everything the business does. We’re talking about what differentiates your practice from the competition and what makes it unique. This includes your: 

  • Vision

  • Mission statement

  • Core values 

  • Core service areas and focus

  • 10 Year Target

  • 3 Year Picture

A marketing team can’t make these decisions for the company. They can only come from the top. 
However, it’s also important to note that if you have partners, everyone needs to be aligned before moving forward. Otherwise, the latter stages of the marketing process will become more expensive, more time-consuming, and less effective.

A fertility business can be in operation for decades. However, if they haven’t structured everything they do in a source of truth (that everyone in the company can point to), they haven’t outlined their unique positioning.

2. Brand

Part of the role as a leader of a company is chief brand ambassador (lowercase, let’s be modest here). Once you and your partners, if necessary, have decided on things like core values and which types of patient segments you especially want to serve, you can move on to branding. 

This includes the 

  • Name of the company

  • Unique value propositions

  • Overall brand look and feel

  • Key messages

Your marketing team will be a key player in this process (if they aren’t, something is wrong), but your leadership is still crucial. 

3. Growth Goals

Employees simply can’t decide growth goals because they don’t have the skin in the game that the principal does. As Gary Vaynerchuk bluntly puts it, “Your employees shouldn’t care about your business as much as you do.”

Unfortunately, marketing personnel are often not even incentivized to pursue growth goals. Worse, administrators and operations personnel are frequently disincentivized from pursuing growth goals because it means more work for them and they get nothing in return.

Your growth strategy is the measurable pursuit of your values, vision, and brand. It is the traction toward your vision put into numbers. Growth goals include:

  • Revenue goals

  • Net profit targets

  • What type of business they want the company to be (like a designated B-Corp, for example)

  • Patient satisfaction score targets

  • Number of new patients served

When the principal of a fertility company needs to be somewhat involved in sales and marketing 

During this next phase, you can begin to dial things back a few notches. You still have some involvement in the sales and marketing process, but now your team is starting to run and you begin to extend your arm to pass the baton.

4. Brand Development

At a minimum, every company should have a set of brand guidelines, also commonly called a brand book or a brand style guide. These documents guide every marketing campaign going forward and they provide the templates of your company’s look and feel.

Your marketing team will work on these guidelines, but the involvement of the principal ensures that the brand comes to life in a way that supports its core values and overall goals.

5. Launching Growth Strategy

The baton is almost passed.  The principal doesn’t need to be involved in every aspect of planning the fertility company’s growth strategy, but they need to be the one to commission it’s execution. 

The principal must see and approve the plan before execution begins. Even when your team is fully incentivized to move towards the company’s growth goals, the principal must ensure that execution of the plan is underway before she or he can step away.

6. Operational Overlap

When you look at the Four Phases of the Fertility Patient Marketing Journey, you’ll notice that the closer you get to the outcome of getting paid and improving patient satisfaction, the greater the operational overlap.

Without continuity across these areas, there is a sharp decrease in the likelihood of the marketing team being able to complete the desired results. These areas are run by other people, and your marketers are not their bosses.

The principal must remain active until operational, administrative, and financial teams accept their role in the strategy.

When a fertility business’s principal can be uninvolved in marketing

We’re finally at the point where you can pass the baton, take a break from the relay race, and let your team take care of the heavy lifting.

7. Coaching/Management

There’s no need for a fertility business’s principal to be involved in coaching your physician liaisons, call center, patient navigators, or marketers. Their managers are in charge of the day to day performance and outside companies can train your teams, or train your managers to train your teams.

If you participated and led at the points you needed to, you can trust your team to get to work. 

8. Brand Activation

As the principal of a fertility practice, you don’t need to direct the brand assets that engage patients with your company.

You’ve approved your brand book; this is a job for your marketing team — they’re the ones who should handle brand activation initiatives like website design, social media templates, and launch campaigns.

9. Strategy Execution (with one exception)

You don’t need to schedule video shoots, write social media posts, edit blog posts, oversee advertising campaigns, implement CRM or EMR sequences, monitor lead conversion, or report on post consult follow up.

There’s one exception, however. 

If you’re being featured in a piece of content, you need to be available as the star while your team produces, writes, directs, films, and edits.

When the principal of a fertility business should get reinvolved in marketing

Periodic reinvolvement keeps the foundation of the REI practice or fertility company solid and ensures long-term success. 

In marketing you can set it but not forget it. As the leader of your practice, it’s important to check in, reinforce accountability, and ensure that sales, marketing, and operations have stayed true to core values. 

10. Culture

In most cases, I hate calling a company's workforce a family. Employees are most certainly not children and they are not your children. In the specific instance of who models the company culture that everyone else imitates, however, this wisdom from Gabrielle Reese is apt.

“[Children] watch you, they don’t listen to you.”

You are the matriarch or patriarch of your fertility business’s family in this sense. The family follows your example.

Really, culture is the ongoing commitment to your positioning, and the critical element of commitment is action. If you’ve decided that your company is going to be more in tune with the needs of same-sex male patients than any other organization, for instance, your team can only live up to that culture to the extent that you champion it.

11. Brand refresh, redesign, extension

Many fertility companies need a brand refresh, periodically.

Fertility centers that built a brand for Baby Boomers or Gen X-ers need to update because Millennials and Gen Z patients now make most of the patient and donor populations. They respond to different types of marketing because they have different concerns

If you decide to extend your identity with a new brand for fertility preservation or third party IVF, the principal must be involved in the beginning stages of those initiatives. If you are changing the identity of your IVF center or fertility company, even moreso.

12. Accountability of Leadership

Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) Accountability Chart applied to fertility clinics

Finally, even trustworthy and capable sales, marketing, finance, and operations leaders need to be held accountable by the visionary and integrator of the organization.

As fertility experience consultant Lisa Duran says, “people do what their managers pay attention to”.

It’s not just about them. Periodic check-ins also demonstrate that you’re holding yourself accountable. Employees don’t need to be micromanaged with due dates and metrics. They should see that the principal is paying attention to the outcomes to which they contribute:

  • IVF cycles

  • Patient Satisfaction

  • Egg freezing retrievals

  • Third-party IVF recipients

  • Third-party IVF cycles

  • Tubal Ligation Reversals

  • Donor recruitment

  • New patients

  • Specific provider volume increase

  • Targeted region/office volume increase

Are you ready for a better relationship with your marketing team?

While you do need to be involved in many aspects of the marketing process, chief executives of fertility companies and REI partners like you also need to be able to free themselves of certain marketing responsibilities. 

Getting to the point where you can pass the baton only happens when someone else is completely in charge of the outcomes that grow the business. Pay attention to these twelve points to know when to lead, when to throttle down your involvement, and when to release.

Letting go can be difficult, though.

That’s where we can help. Get Fertility Bridge’s support in selecting marketing personnel, determining their responsibilities and outcomes, and more with our Goal and Competitive Diagnostic.

122: Attracting and Retaining Embryologists with Dr. Tony Anderson

This week, Dr. Tony Anderson joined Griffin Jones on the podcast to shed light on why there are so many embryologist openings and what you can do about it. He estimates that out of 420 clinics, there are 400 job listings for embryologists. Even if you do find one, how do you retain them? Dr. Anderson gives us strategies that you can implement now to help embryologists avoid burnout 


More from this episode: 

  • How to reduce embryologist burn-out

  • Why there is a huge demand for embryologists

  • How to attract and retain embryologists

  • Best way to train new embryologists

  • What younger embryologists look for in a work environment

 

Dr. Anderson’s Information

LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-anderson-d-h-sc-eld-abb-8272a21b/

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/embryodirector

Website: https://ivfacademyusa.com/

 

Mentioned in this episode: 

Think Again by Adam Grant: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Again-Power-Knowing-What/dp/1984878107


Transcript

[00:00:00] Griffin Jones: Want more embryologists right now? Yeah. You and everybody else. So today I talk with someone who has a plan of getting more and retaining them. His name is Dr. Tony Anderson. He's the founder and director of a program called Embryo Director IVF Academy. Before we get into today's show, the shout out, goes to Dr. Isaac Glatstein in New Jersey who made the connection for this interview. There are topics that you think that I should cover. And people that you think are very qualified to cover them, that the business side of the fertility field should here, please make those intros. I don't always take them, but sometimes I do.

And this was a case that I did. So I hope Dr. Isaac Glatstein is doing really well in my interview with Dr. Anderson, we talk about ways of eliminating some things in the IVF lab, so that current embryology staff are less burned out. We talk about ways of recruiting them some of the low hanging fruit for training and then growth programs so that they stay with you.

And that it isn't just about money. And we do talk about some of the current wages and competition for them in the marketplace. So enjoy this interview on today's Inside Reproductive Health with Dr. Tony Anderson. 

 

[00:01:54] Griffin Jones: Dr. Anderson, Tony, welcome to the inside reproductive. 

[00:01:59] Tony Anderson: Thank you Griff. Delighted to be here and welcome to be here. Thank you. 

[00:02:03] Griffin Jones: It was an REI mutual friend of ours that put us in contact. I was telling you before the show started that I tend to neglect the lab.

And you said that I often talk about a shortage of doctors and I do almost every episode and some, I very often forget to talk about the shortage of qualified embryologists and lab staff. And so that's something that you're working on. Why don't you first talk about what you see is the problem and then talk about what you're doing to solve it.

[00:02:32] Tony Anderson: Well, we've actually seen a large increase and the demand for IVF and fertility preservation of fertility genetics. I always use the example of, we've built our careers on the baby boomers coming through. That's where I built my career on. And today the gen X-ers millennials are the largest generation of the 20th century.

And all of these young people are coming of age and so there's higher demand. And with these young people coming up fertility age, we're not only just treating infertility. We're also preserving fertility. We're doing genetics and, there's a lot of at-home testing that we can do.

So the industry is just really growing. There's more demand for that. 

[00:03:19] Griffin Jones: So when we talk about the demand, that's probably going to increase for some time. Why is there a shortage of embryologist to meet the demand? Why isn't the supply of embryologist grown with the demand? 

[00:03:34] Tony Anderson: It's not a huge, huge career.

We're a very small group niche of people just like REI and fertility nurses. They're just a lot of nurses out there that in general. So we tend to recruit for nursing from other nursing departments, nursing careers, but when you get into nursing, it's, it's a whole new language that we speak. It could be a nurse for 30 years, come into fertility and it's a whole new career. Embryologists are a lot the same way. No one actually goes to school to be an embryologist. A lot of us are pre-vetted or pre-med or biology majors, and just bringing them into the careers, actually recruiting them as the hardest. And in my training program, I'm actually trying to recruit people to train and get them into the embryology career.

And a lot of people just don't know about it. And so going to the local universities, there's also a misconception to believe that you have to have a master's degree to become an embryologist. And that's not the case. You have to follow the regulatory guidelines. You have to have a minimum of a bachelor's degree and a science, a physical, chemical, biological sciences.

 So I'm always trying to recruit these people into the industry and embryology, but if you could go back to the very first IVF baby Louise brown in 1978 .I always like to say we're like a band. You always have the doctor who is Patrick Steptoe. You always have the embryologist who is Bob Edwards, and you have a nurse that was Jean Purdy.

You could just search Louise Brown in anything and you'll come up with those three people. And I always like to say, when you have fertility care fertility treatment, you have to have, the band is like, you gotta have a guitar player, but without the the bass player, the drummer.

It's really not a band. And so you really have to have those three people and, , working with medical practices, there's always the the control tower or the people running the front desk that are regulating the flow. So, it takes the whole group to put it together.

But my focus has really been working on embryology, recruiting them, training them. And I go through a three month training program to get them into the embryology and then help them find jobs. So that's what I'm trying to do, where there's a demand for it and to feel bad. 

[00:05:48] Griffin Jones: Who are we losing people to when there are people that could be great embryologists and they're out there pointing their career, when they're pursuing that or another scientific endeavor in the case of REI, we might be losing other REI to other subspecialties.

Maybe they're going into MFM, or maybe we're losing them a little bit earlier and they're not sub-specializing at all. Or maybe we're losing even some of them a little bit earlier than that. And they're choosing a different line of medicine then obstetrics and gynecology. So what are the other areas?

And I never asked this to Bill Venier or Shaun Reed or any of the people that came on to talk about lab needs in the past. Who are we losing people to? 

[00:06:31] Tony Anderson: It's not so much losing people. If you take the example of the REI. REI has only have so many fellowships a year per year. And so there's probably more demand for REI, then are actually going into the fellowship. And so OB GYN is go through residency. They want to get into a fellowship and some get accepted. Some do not. And, because of that, the demand there, maybe they need to expand that for awhile to meet the demand when I mentioned that we're treating the, this largest generation of our lives. Then, maybe we need to meet that demand now, but then maybe cut it back later, if the demand goes down. Embryologist there's not like a fellowship or residency, and that's kind of what I'm trying to create here. Rather than you don't have to go get a master's degree, it's just bringing them into it. A lot of people graduate. I mean, I've recruited people with biology degrees and they end up, they're working in cake shops and bakeries and lawyer, working in illegal offices, not because that's what they want teach them, they can go out and do something that they really went to college to do originally. 

[00:07:38] Griffin Jones: I want to talk about more, how you're recruiting them. You mentioned that there is no fellowship for embryology, and I believe that one of the biggest bottlenecks on the REI side is the. The fellowship and the fact that there's only 44, we're only making 44 new fertility doctors a year.

Could we be making a hundred or 200 that's for someone else to say, but it is part of the bottleneck. So without that accreditation bottleneck, what is the bottleneck for embryologists? 

[00:08:11] Tony Anderson: Really just getting experienced, one of the things that I see happening in the industry today is people, every lab, every there's 420 labs in the country, and there's probably 400 job openings right now.

And so if you have a lab, 

[00:08:28] Griffin Jones: Repeat that for me, the listener will have gotten it, but I want to make sure that I got to repeat that, please. 

[00:08:33] Tony Anderson: Well, there's, I believe there is around 420 lab laboratories in the country that report to SART. And I would say that there's probably 400 job openings right now. And so if you are going to another center to recruit from that center, there's still a zero net gain in that community.

And so we're really robbing from Peter to paypal and, we're not doing any of the community, a service or justice that way. 

[00:09:00] Griffin Jones: Is that 400 an estimate? That 400 job openings is an estimate Tony, how do that? 

[00:09:05] Tony Anderson: Just about every lab out there is recruiting and I mean, I'm doing some work where, like you mentioned bill and Debbie out in California, like we're working with ovations and the preludes and, helping recruit people for those centers too, because there's such a demand in them. And if someone is leaving one program to go another to another. Just a continual opening for four positions. I dunno if the ad 400 is an accurate position.

I personally when I'm looking for somebody, I tend not to advertise those jobs because , you want to, look for qualified candidates. And I actually, the last four people I've hired, I've actually hired off of indeed. And until recently I've never hired anybody off of indeed usually I, people will come to me wanting to be trained and, and I will work with them. And that's how I'm actually recruiting. A lot of my, my students were, through Glassdoor and indeed. And , sharing what I have to offer. And what's really funny is that a lot of feedback I get is because I offer an ISA and income sharing agreement where students don't pay anything for their training.

 And I offer that because I am confident enough in my skills and that I can train them and get them a position that I I'm willing to take that risk. And then once they get into their job, I work with a percentage of their income until the tuition is paid back. 

[00:10:33] Griffin Jones: A different higher Ed would be if that were model universally adopted. 

[00:10:39] Tony Anderson: Yeah, what undergraduate degree offers that are master's or doctorate degree offers that. And so that's what I'm doing. And when I get a feedback with that is that is too good to be true, like who would do that? But I just know there's enough demand.

And I've been doing this for 30 years that I I'm confident that I can get them a job if they're willing to be moved. I live here in San Antonio. It's where my lab is, there's only like four labs in San Antonio. So if you want to be in San Antonio, that really limits what I can do.

But if you're willing to go anywhere in the country, there's no doubt in my mind that anybody who comes through will have a job when they're done. 

[00:11:17] Griffin Jones: So talk to us about what you were doing before and then how you decided. You knew that there was a demand, but how did you decide that you could meet this market need for training more embryologist?

What were you doing before? And then what was it that got you to leave your day job? 

[00:11:35] Tony Anderson: Yeah, we all, just like anybody, when I left my undergraduate looking for a job. I ended up cloning cows working in the bovine industry early in my career. A lot of us from the bovine world were recruited into the human world.

And worked with some really great people in my career work with Klaus Wiemer, Jacques Cohen, Santiago Munne. Like I had some great mentors along the way. And I always had this euphoric dream that I was going to train my group of people. And I would retire with that group of people.

And over time, as I felt like I was constantly training people. I ended up doing my masters at Leeds University, distance learning program. And my doctorate degree was at Nova Southeastern where, one of our projects we had to do, we actually had to create an educational program. We had to create our own class. And through that, I thought, why not create this, training program through this? And so I started putting it together and just kind of experimented with a few people, not really knowing if it was going to do anything. And I ended up training a few people for free and getting them jobs and they are doing really well in their career. And I actually, one of the my medical director at the time Francisco Ardando, he's like you actually are really good at training people that actually putting it in terms that people understand and not trying to make it sound all flowery and fluffy.

And so, I just started doing it and put it together and put together the program started marketing it and it was really kind of funny. It's kinda like, I thought, well, my reputation, if , people will come, I'll build a website, they'll come. They didn't come. And really that's when I started kind of doing my, booths at the shows and people start realizing that this is a real deal.

And so it was actually training program of the kind in the United States. And I believe there's a couple more, you mentioned bill out in California and bill and Debbie, but yeah, so we just built it up. And in this year I decided to go out full-time on my own and doing this whole time.

[00:13:42] Griffin Jones: So tell me about those booths. Where are you recruiting people from? How are you finding people? Because as you mentioned, a lot of people don't even know that this is a potential career path. 

[00:13:53] Tony Anderson: Yeah, well, I mean, really honestly, it's really kind of getting the trust from my peers. I've been working in the field, so it's a very small field.

We tend to all know each other and basically, there's two types of people like there's people currently in labs and IVF labs. Like I have two people coming in next week. They, are coming in from New York. To train for five days. Those are short-term courses so the, the booths are really that I recently started doing the long-term courses, the three month courses, this past year. And I'm recruiting those. A lot of those people from going to the schools, going to universities, collaborating with some of the bio biology departments and really kind of recruiting from indeed as well, to bring those people in and train them from scratch to nobody from zero to hero.

[00:14:42] Griffin Jones: So the short term courses are people who are working in labs right now. It's IVF centers are sending those folks too. And the three month longer-term courses are for making new embryologists. 

[00:14:54] Tony Anderson: Yeah. The real low hanging fruit for in the centers right now. If somebody wants to, they're short and the embryo lab, like you can train somebody pretty quickly into andrology usually around just, I usually I call my andrology course a five day course, you can do basic semen analysis count motility, morphologies, and then you could do the IVF, perhaps IOI, perhaps usually within five days, you can do that, but it's going to take quite a bit more time for the embryology piece. So a lot of those, a lot of these labs, I think one of the real criminal things that we do to some of our teams is we have somebody in andrology that they've been there for nine years and they are hunger for an opp opportunity to get into embryology and then they don't. So bring those people into embryology. You can always recruit people into andrology and let that kind of feeding your embryo lab. They learn the quality control. They learn how to keep things organized and manage it. And if you make a mistake with sperm, you can always go back and get another sperm sample.

Do you make a mistake with an embryo? You can't go back and make another embryos. So, I always say that the andrology lab is a great way to recruit people into embryology and let me help you get them to competency faster. The real talk real struggle is that is the labs are really so short staffed that they can't find the time to train them.

[00:16:22] Griffin Jones: So let's talk a little bit about that because their so short-staffed, there's a lot of burnout happening in the lab and there's someone on social media. We both likely know that I'm trying to get on the podcast. I won't mention this individual's name because they're not ready to talk about it on the podcast, but on social media frequently talking about burnout for lab staff.

And on one hand, of course, they're being asked to do so much. On the other hand, I don't know what the alternative is. There's that many people that need IVF cycles. And, and so can you talk a little bit more about the burnout and the busy-ness and how do we solve for this at a long-term bigger picture issue, if we're too busy to do anything but cycling right now?

[00:17:09] Tony Anderson: Yeah. Well, one of the things that we also have to recognize too, is who are our employees? Who are these, we're, they're not people like, I mean, I don't want to like in the generational piece, but, people don't always work for money just because you're going to pay him more money.

Doesn't mean that they're going to want to work more for you. And so people, I like a lot of the people we're recruiting the gen Z, gen Y. They would rather make less money and have better quality of life. And, I gotta say like, maybe they have more right than I did. And so when we talk about burnout, one there's just such a demand, I keep hearing these stories about embryologist, making sure demands of like really huge salaries and working seven to three and not going to work a minute more after that, but just saying, it's kind of odd. You can't do that in embryology, you can't go home to the work's done, if you work in a business office, if the work's not done, you can always pick it up tomorrow where you left off, you can't do that in biology. So we tend not to work, regular hours, regular weekends, and then that's where the burnout comes. Cause it's a 365 day a year. And it sounds kind of crazy. A lot of times when someone comes to me, it sounds like I'm trying to talk them out of embryology because it is. There's probably only one industry that demands more of you than an embryologist. And that's the dairy industry because in the dairy industry, cows need to be milked twice a day, no matter what it doesn't stop. And embryology is a lot the same way. One retrieval a week requires seven days worth of work.

And if you freeze embryos, those embryos never go home. You're caring for them every day, the Cryotanks.

[00:18:51] Griffin Jones: So is there anything else we can do except I guess, invest in training programs like yours. Is there anything else to do though when the demand is so high, it's like I get that you want to work weekends and we'd love to offer you more time off, but or have you do less cycles in the course of a week. But we are beyond, we've got a two month wait list for our new patients. And we're trying to cycle as many people as we can. 

[00:19:17] Tony Anderson: That's a great point. And actually there's a book that I recently read. It's called Think Again by Adam Grant.

It's a spectacular book and I think any embryologist medical director, really anybody in any walk of life will get something out of this. And the idea is that just because we've been doing it one way, all of our careers and all of our lives doesn't mean we shouldn't rethink some of those things.

And I'll use an example of, some of the things that, when I first got into embryology, it was very simple. We did retrieval. We fertilized, we transfer, the next day, like literally two days later pregnancy rates were terrible, but as we did more, we added oil culture. We added ICSI, we added genetic testing.

So it's gotten progressively harder and harder over the years. And the way we were able to do more. With less people, as we stopped making our media, we stopped making micro tools. We stopped doing some of the day two assessments, the day four assessments. So maybe there's still some things that we can do, and this is going to be out there in left field.

And some of my peers might think. But maybe we could get away with not doing fert checks because we're doing genomic testing on every single case almost. So if we're not doing the fertilization checks, then, we're doing the genomics. We're going to know if the genetics is okay before we transfer it and I know a lot of programs are stopping the day three assessments. And so with the day three assessments, it doesn't really matter. Most of us are going to the blastocyst and I always say that if you're going to do a day three assessment, it's kind of like trying to pick the winner of a horse race, on the back turn kind of thing.

So if you're going to the blastocyst, the only way to really know anything is to look at the day that you're going to at the finish line. And one of the things that I'm actually encouraging, some of the labs I'm working in is getting some of these embryo imaging, incubators, where we can look at some of them along the way.

Maybe not have to bring them out and just look at them at time when we have the time and hiring people to outsource things that we're not doing, like data entry, emailing the patients, embryologists do a lot. I always say it's about 60% bench time, 40% admin time. You could increase their bandwidth if you took that 40% admin time away and let allow them to work doing what they were doing, but they'd best at. 

[00:21:43] Griffin Jones: Well, whenever anyone is at capacity with anything. The first thing to do is eliminate anything that's possible. You've given us a couple ideas then automate and then delegate or outsource, and even as like a couple of ideas for that. So that might be able to help some folks with burnout temporarily. I want to go back to something you said, because I want to see if you think it's true when you're talking to these new candidates, when you said a lot of the millennial and gen Z are willing to make less money in order to have more time, I hear it all the time. Tony, I had see it in some HR statistics and stuff. I'm skeptical that it's true. I think they want that. I think they want the time that the older generations didn't have and they want the money and they want it.

 That's what I'm seeing when I hire, especially I know the last year or so has been a fluke in the entire job market or a riff, you might say I'm not convinced that it's ever going back to normal. Even if we see a recession, I know things will, sometimes they admin in the favor of employees. Sometimes in the favor of employers, but I really think that this could be the new normal, where six figures is the basement for anything like being a manager at a retail store and anything. And, and they want to work 30 or 40 hours a week tops. And that drives up the real, the market for, for highly skilled labor, like embryology.

And so what are you seeing, when you're seeing these younger folks start to take positions? 

[00:23:19] Tony Anderson: Well, I agree with you can't hire somebody at a base salary and I don't, I've never operated this way. You can't hire somebody at a base salary and expect a 3% a year that, I always use the magical 10,000 hours after you've worked 10,000 hours.

You should be a master of your trade. And so, when you're training with me, I'm going to give you like 400 hours, during that three month timeframe, but you're not going to be an expert till you've done a good solid five years of what you do. I can fully train, I've actually just recently published as submitted a paper for publication on the training and how well it works. But at the end of the day, when you hire somebody, you have to be willing to give them five and $10,000 raise that raises for that first year to get them to where they're at, you have to pay them fairly. And that's where, if you hire someone who's going to use a random number like if you hire someone for $50,000 , straight out of school with some training the program or 60,000, that in five years, you probably need to be up there in that, six figure salary. If you're still paying them 55,000 or 60,000, or even 65,000, they're going to go somewhere else.

So you have to pay them fairly enough. And then also give them, I think with a lot of the younger people, they don't want to be micromanaged. So in some ways I agree you can't. Just let them work from eight to four or eight to three and pay them six figures. But the goal is that, if you think you can get to that point, then they probably will.

When I'm recruiting people, I have a coffee talk with them and just like I'm having, what do you want your base salary? Where do you think you'll be in five years? What what's gonna make you happy? And if you're not, if I can't make those expectations, then I don't want to recruit them into the program.

I actually had worked with the EVMS program for awhile while I was teaching them. And I had one of the students come out and say like, they expected their base, their first salary to be $80,000. And I said, I got some good news. I got some bad news. Sunday you'll make 80,000, but it's not going to be your first salary out of school.

It's you have to work up to that and they if you make a plan for them in the beginning or where they're going to be and where they're going to be in five years and you'll have some loyalty and commitment and not have to make them sign non-compete contracts, I never had anybody have to do that.

My goal is to support them along the way and be there as a director, I also offsite direct labs and that's how I recruit people in here's your growth plan for the next five years? The real challenge is after five years, what are you going to do? That's been my real challenge is after five years and you're not learning as much.

You're not building those skills. And now you have to kind of really drill down as a person, that person that you have hired, how are they going to get better? And at that point, maybe they should consider master's degrees and doctorate degrees to maybe grow in the supervisory level and lab director level.

[00:26:21] Griffin Jones: So is that sustainable though, at a time when people can constantly one up the other with salary, I guess. So even if you were so money motivated you maybe want a greater work-life balance, but okay. I'm either going to be working the same or they're both going to work me like a dog anyway. And all of a sudden this other person across the street is offering me 25% more than I'm making now because their need is that bad.

And they need it now, I guess. How do you maintain loyalty? 

[00:26:57] Tony Anderson: Well, I would say that a lot of these people that are jumping from one place to another, to another, that if I saw a resume that did that. I wouldn't be real hesitant to hire that person. 

[00:27:07] Griffin Jones: If you're so desperate, Tony, like I think some, somebody still might pick up Antonio brown next year for all the football fans that understand that they still might do it.

Even though that is a fire of a resume, but some buddy might be desperate enough to do it. And, and when there is such high demand, I think people will look well, eight months here, a year and a half here. I still see people getting hired like that. 

[00:27:33] Tony Anderson: Yeah, honestly, I actually know people recruiting people that way too.

And I really actually hate to see that recruiting from other centers, you get a bad reputation as a lab director and an organization when you do that. And you have to be real cautious about if you're the one leaving and because I have had peers that they jumped from one program to another, to another, and some large cities you can get away with that San Antonio, you can't because if, unless you want to leave to another city but , say like if you're in New York, if you jump from program to program, you can do that for awhile.

But after awhile, what are you going to do it? And even if they do offer you more money, are you really worth that amount of money? And just because you have a desire to do that. And there's another thing that I also always say, if you don't like where you're at, because of personalities or something like that, then wherever you go, that's where you'll be.

I have another way of putting it, the reason why the grass is greener on the other side is cause it's covered. Cause it's covered in crap. When you get over there, it's the same crap that you're sitting in. So just because you're moving and jumping around from program to program, doesn't mean you're actually worth it or things are going to be better when you get there.

[00:28:45] Griffin Jones: Well, let's talk a little bit about other ways of motivating in keeping embryologist to justify training them because I'm not totally satisfied with the wage prior to my friend, Dr. Eduardo Harrison is listening. He and I had a debate about well, the cost of fertility treatment go up or down.

And in the next five years, I still see it going up. And one of the reasons is I think that the salaries that you mentioned for recruiting people into the field are, are too low. I th when I hear that compared to what I pay my people, and we're a marketing firm, for example, it's like why there's so many other places everywhere across the workforce.

And maybe that will like I said, maybe it will add back to the other way to employers, but it sounds to me, like there might be too much competition that even if somebody isn't money motivated, it's like, wow. Like if I could do this for 30% more, 20% more I think that's a hard thing to overcome, but lets you and I are in solving for that today. One other thing that I want to think about is how do you keep people engaged in a way that justifies investing in them? I wonder if embryology is too boring for some gen Z folks or for some millennials. And the example that I have is I was talking with a junior embryologist who was applying for a position with us.

And I think that they're doing pretty well for themselves and they're in a very busy area. But they wanted to get out of the lab itself. They wanted to stay in fertility. They wanted to work like in a biz dev role in fertility. So if there are lab companies, give me a call, connect you with this person.

But I think that they just didn't want to stand on their feet all day or sit in a chair and be in a lab. All day and this person could, could accelerate a lot more in, in their career and be, and do really well. But they weren't interested. And so how do we either screen for that or help people grow that they actually want to stay?

[00:30:48] Tony Anderson: Yeah, that's those are you bring up some really good points and there's a couple of things that came to mind while asking the question, kind of going back to, people in embryology, one of my challenges was, because it's not cheap, to have an embryo training lab, like I have to have the exact same amount of equipment that an IVF lab would have even more. Because if I want to train more than one student, I have to have multiple micro stations at a a hundred thousand dollars a piece, microscopes. I have to have all of that stuff, liquid nitrogen and embryos. It's very expensive to operate, so it's not cheap to train someone.

And so one of the things I would say, when you talk about cost is not going to go down, but if you're a medical director and you are wanting to invest in your people, when you invest in your people, that means you have a faith in them. You want to keep them there and that's how you're going to keep them engaged, keeping them going to meetings and, investing in them, not just treating them like the carrot in front of the pony and taking them along. But let's just say, if you were to go put $5,000 into training somebody, an Axiom biopsy course now when they come back, when they do for ICSI, or four biopsies. Now you've made your money back every biopsy and ICSI after that, they're going to keep making you money. That investment is going to make you hundreds of thousands percent versus, if you were to put $5,000 in the stock market you might make, if you made 10%, you're going to make $500 a year.

But if you invest in one training course, as you know, two training courses that say $5,000 all year long, every time they do a Biopsy for you, it's making you money. It's the best investment of fertility center can make in their people right now and showing them that they believe in them and showing them that they're going to continue to invest in them and their growth and in hiring people that to, to to help them have this quality of life and, and and to grow in their careers. 

[00:32:55] Griffin Jones: How's AI going to change the work flow that we've talked about in the lab on the clinic side. I've talked about with Dr. Bob Stillman about the possibility of like minority report with the huge screen.

And REI is managing hundreds of cases at once using AI. What is it going to be like in the lab in the next decade do you suppose? 

[00:33:20] Tony Anderson: Oh, well, AI is going to, a lot of people are afraid of AI and a lot of people are afraid of the robotics and a IVF in a box that is going to take our jobs away.

I think it's going to simplify our work and we're, increase our bandwidth to do more. We won't have to manually do the assessments. Everything will be done by the machine, through like Embryoscopes or, MIRI, embryo imaging type incubators. And historically those incubators haven't been shown to make any clinical improvements, but if you can save a safety and time, then those types of pieces will be good.

And people are been able to overlay big data. That'll help you select the best embryo. People like me, who've been looking at embryos for 30 years. We can look at an embryo, back one of my prize, paper nominations. I had a few years ago that I could select an embryo and have just as good a pregnancy rate as a PGT embryo.

And just knowing how the embryo grows. Well, maybe some of the young folks won't have to learn all of those things and that actually make their training go faster. So AI is actually going to be a tool to help us do more with less people. And that's where I see it going and I think we should embrace that.

I think we should embrace the idea of having witnessing systems and bring those into the laboratories to increase safety.

[00:34:40] Griffin Jones: How close are we to some of that? How close are we to AI doing the assessments, for example, and I wait two or three years away from that, do you think it's not on the horizon and you have no way of knowing.

[00:34:52] Tony Anderson: No, it's there now Embryoscope will actually do that now, in there even actually overlaying AI on the genomics testing to take the human variability is out of it. One of the things that is going to make it more expensive because an Embryoscope is a $180,000.

A Casa, computerized assistance semen analysis system is anywhere between 40 and $80,000. If you have a witnessing system it's gonna cost you probably another 50 to $60,000 a year, depending on how large your program is. And so you have to put that cost onto the patient, unfortunately, but with that, the systems, well, if they would all work together that's one of the problems is that, , one company has this system and other company has this system. If they all talked to the EMR, then they would actually be a very powerful system. And so that, really any EMR, if you could get the data to automatically upload into the EMR just like we do with lab core we send a blood to lab core.

All that data automatically goes into the EMR. If we could get our incubators and witnessing systems to do that for us, it would really make life a lot safer and simpler for the laboratory team. We spend a lot of time. It takes a lot of resources to make sure you get it right every time. I always say it's like, when you're going to land on an airplane, a pilot comes in at the runway and if he or she, doesn't feel comfortable with the runway, you can always come back up and come around and do make another attempt at it.

When you're an embryologist, you get one shot at it. Every single time you have to hit that runway every single time. And so these systems are going to actually make our lives better. But it's going to make an investment. Casa systems have been around for 30 years, but you'll find very few in the laboratories because they are very expensive and most docs will be like, well, I can pay that person $30,000 a year versus buying the system for 80,000.

[00:36:51] Griffin Jones: Well now maybe they can't. So maybe that's the tipping point for some of this. So Tony, most of our audience is practice owners or execs for other companies in the fertility field. How would you like to conclude today's topic? 

[00:37:04] Tony Anderson: Well, it's been a pleasure to be here and I appreciate the invite to come and just hope that working, collaborating with the people that are recruiting and seeking embryologist to help them to bridge that gap and to fill that those areas that they need. 

[00:37:21] Griffin Jones: Where can people find you? Where can people find you? And we'll also link it in the show notes. 

[00:37:25] Tony Anderson: My website is https://ivfacademyusa.com/. And my email is dranderson@embryodirector.com. 

[00:37:37] Griffin Jones: Dr. Tony Anderson. Thank you so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health. 

[00:37:41] Tony Anderson: Thank you Griff. I appreciate you. 

121: Thriving as a Fertility Practice Without Taking Insurance with Dr. Eyvazzadeh

Griffin Jones and Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh discuss how she is successfully running her practice solely accepting cash-only patients. The days of losing money due to insurance companies’ refusal to pay are far gone for her. The secret to Dr. Eyvazzadeh’s success is her massive top-of-the-funnel marketing strategy and her efficiency of weeding out patients that aren’t a good fit before she or her staff spends time with the prospect. What matters most in fertility marketing isn’t what most people expect.

In this episode, we cover: 

  • Who would be able to run a cash-only only system

  • How Dr. Aimee has developed a massive top of funnel engine

  • Why success rates aren’t the marketing factor most think

  • Why Dr. Aimee attracts 15% of her patients from out-of-town


This episode is sponsored by: 

Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee. 



Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh’s Information:
Company: Aimee Eyvazzadeh MD, Inc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimee-eyvazzadeh-12715932

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_EggWhisperer

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctoraimee/

Insta: https://www.instagram.com/eggwhisperer/



Mentioned in the episode: 

NoHold ( https://www.nohold.com/

EggWhispererSchool.com


[00:00:00] Griffin Jones: Insurance employer benefits can't live with them. Can't live without them. I don't know. Today. I have Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh on Inside Reproductive Health. She was on the show about a year or so ago. It was episode 88, if you recall and I just kept asking and trying to figure out why does she have this system for patient attraction of all the content that she's putting out there of this brand and messaging. If she's not trying to scale an enterprise, she would certainly have more patients than she knows what to do with it. If she didn't especially being in the San Francisco Bay Area. Well come to find out. It has partly to do with the fact that they only take self pay patients at Dr. Aimee's practice.

And that's when the light went off. And we talk about the funnel that's necessary today. What kind of market that you have to be in and a couple of other requirements for. Being a self pay only REI practice. Many of you wonder about this and you wonder if, well, I keep getting lower reimbursements on this service from this insurance company, this employer benefits company.

Well, there might be a way for you to just forego that altogether. And I recommend that you listen to Dr. Aimee's take before you do that. So I really hope you enjoy today's show about being a self pay only practice with Aimee Eyvazzadeh.

 

[00:02:12] Griffin Jones: Dr. Eyvazzadeh Aimee. Welcome back to inside reproductive health. 

[00:02:17] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: It's always great to be talking to you, Griffin. Thanks for inviting me back.

[00:02:20] Griffin Jones: If anybody has listened to episode 88 and a lot of people listening now will in episode 88, when I had Dr. Aimee on the first time, I'm just trying to get after, like, I keep asking you questions, like why build a brand like this?

Why build something that is otherwise meant to scale? If you're not trying to scale, like you're not trying to. Open more offices, hire more docs, things like that. And I could, like, I kept grilling you. I was grilling the crap out of you the whole episode, and I still couldn't figure it out why after the conversation.

And then sometime after, like in one of those detective movies where there's a benign clue that set something off and the client's like Washington street that's right. The suspect was from DC. And then he runs back to the headquarters and it was like that when I learned about your. That you are a self-pay practice that you don't take insurance and other types of you know, like the employer benefit coverage.

And I was like, that makes sense. It all is starting to make sense now. So can you talk a little bit about that model and then I'll talk about how I perceive it from a branding perspective with the questions I have there. 

[00:03:32] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah. I mean, the thing is that I don't own an IVF. Right. And so when you accept insurance, you have to accept the rates that they're going to give you.

And if you don't own the lab, it's hard to carve out the global fee for the physician fee and then the lab fee. So I was taking insurance up until 2013 and then I started paying for my patients, I guess. Because I felt so bad that their insurance was denying the claim on the ICSI. For example, the patient expected that to be paid, but the IVF lab expects to be paid $2,000 for ICSI.

And then I was writing the checks out and I'm like, this is just, it doesn't make sense. Like why would I be paying for people to do IVF with me, I just can't, you know, sustain a practice like that. So then I said, you know what? I have to go cash only. And if people want to receive care for me, they're going to have to, you know, forego the insurance.

And we're so lucky in the bay area like, everyone's my friend here. There's so many fertility doctors. So if there's a patient that really needs to use their insurance, I happily make, I call them warm introductions to doctors that I think will be a really good fit for them after I meet with them and talk through their story with them.

So, you know, I do a lot of, you know, first consults for fertility patients, you know, second opinion consult. And then I just hand them off to a doctor that accepts their insurance.

[00:04:44] Griffin Jones: So it was 2013 that this change happened. Was it ripping off the band-aid all at once? How did you do it? 

[00:04:52] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Well, it was slowly because obviously you have to give notice to the insurance companies and then it was no new patients with this insurance up until, you know, I could actually, you know, say absolutely no new patients at all with insurance. And it was hard for me emotionally, because I felt so bad saying no to people, especially patients who were well-established who want to come back for, let's say another transfer. That was really tough to say, you can't use your insurance with me, but again, because they could still use their insurance at the IVF lab, they could easily just transition over and I was there to help and guide them. It's not like I abandoned them in any way, but that, that was tough. It was really hard. My accountant was like, Aimee, look at how much money you paid the IVF lab. So you could do cases there. You actually lost money, you know, helping these patients. And for me, you know, there's a good reason why I don't own a lab.

And the reason is I would do everyone's idea for free, literally. Like I would just be like, oh, you don't have to, but now that I know, like I have to write a check for that patient to have IVF that for me, makes it so that I can still run the office the way I do and take care of as many patients as I can take care of.

[00:05:53] Griffin Jones: So how long did that take? 

[00:05:56] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: About a year to go from, you know, well, it was something that I had been thinking about for awhile. And so finally, once I did it, it took about 12 months to get to the point where I can completely just say no insurance at all. 

[00:06:07] Griffin Jones: And what is the arrangement with the lab, like in order to be able to do that?

[00:06:14] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: To say no insurance. Well, it's a facility agreement, just like a surgeon has privileges at, let's say a surgery center for me. I have privileges at different IVF labs and the same fees that a patient sees. It's all very transparent. So let's say one of the centers charges the patient, you know, let's say $3,000 to do an embryo biopsy.

Well, rather than them paying the IVF lab, the $3,000 for the embryo biopsy fee, they pay one fee for their IVF cycle. And then I pay the lab for the services performed base on that. 

[00:06:43] Griffin Jones: Okay. When I've seen the model of not owning a lab before, very often, the person has one lab that they use. And I think, you know, the three or four examples that I'm thinking of, they all, each use one lab. You use multiple lab?

[00:06:59] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I predominantly use one lab, but the thing is that like, we're all again, like we're all friends here in the bay area and you know, I have patients that, you know, go to another lab because now they have insurance at another lab, but then they want to come back to me and have me do the transfer for them, for example.

Right. Rather than move the embryos to another lab, I can go to that lab and you know, do the transfer for them. So it just makes it easier for the patient. For example, who let's say wants another perspective or, you know, still wants my help after doing IVF somewhere else. And I can still go to that lab. So yeah, I have privileges have many different labs, but it's all just to help the patient and make things harder on me.

But I do it with joy and it's fun for me to just see people and say hi to them again and see how things are going in their lab. 

[00:07:43] Griffin Jones: Yeah. Would this work, if you owned your own lab, would you be able to do this self pay model? And if not, why not? 

[00:07:52] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I think you could, I mean, if you own your own lab, you can do self pay, but just really depend on where you are, you know, like the demographics in the city that you're in. I'm really fortunate in the bay area, but I'm in a situation where when I make a recommendation to a patient for a treatment plan. Like I think, you know, you're 40 years old. I think you might need two to three IVF cycles.

I think we need to bank embryos. We need to genetically test them. Patients are like, okay, I'll make that work. I'll see what I need to do financially. But I know that there are parts of the country where that's really hard, even for patients to even consider one IVF cycle. So even saying the word a couple thousand dollars can be really a challenge for some people.

So I know I am in a unique situation here. And it's not definitely something for every community, you know, every doctor across the country, but it definitely is something that I've been able to do in the bay area, just because of, you know, the area we're in. And also I do have patients that come in, obviously from out of town as well.

And so they come here knowing, you know, upfront what the cycle fees are here and they're different and you know, in every area of the country, they're going to be a little bit different based on you know, the cost of living in that area.

[00:09:03] Griffin Jones: I don't suspect you'd be able to do that in Akron, Ohio, and that's somebody practices in Akron, Ohio.

I don't know them, but, or I could use any other town as an example. I'm not picking on Akron, but I think my hypothesis is that this works in more affluent coastal cities with very large populations. I had somebody asking me about this years ago, it was closer to when I first came into the field so it was probably five or six years ago. And they're asking me if this was possible, and this was my hypothesis that you would have to be in a really large market. And then you'd also have to be in a, you have to have a wide funnel. That narrows down into that short spout coming out of that funnel, that would be the wide funnel, meaning your, your marketing message attracting people, because you're going to have less people that are able to pass through the bottom of that funnel.

And so it's gotta be wide at the top because it's shorter at the bottom. And I want to talk about that funnel with you and the brand. But I have one question that's probably evidence of my ignorance as a non-clinician, but how do you report success rates in that way if you're using different people's labs? 

[00:10:23] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I say, if you share with me your age, your follicle count, your AMH and FSH, I'll let you know what your individualized pregnancy rates are. And based on the information that I have about you and I can give that to the patient individually. I don't think it's fair for, let's say a 39 year old with an AMH is 0.1 to compare herself with all, you know, the start data on 39 year olds, because obviously her chances are going to be different.

[00:10:45] Griffin Jones: So that I've think circumvents, a lot of the challenge of success rates to begin with, like the whole controversy around success rates is that you're positioning something like really broadly you're cherry picking data. Everybody complains about what everybody else is posting on their website or how they're choosing.

And, and so it's like, you're, it seems to me like you're avoiding that all together. 

[00:11:12] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah. I mean, when a patient asks, like where can I find your success rates? I went to start and I don't find you. I say, well, I can't, you can't take the lab that you're going to as a sign of your potential success rate. But I can tell you, you know, just based on the data that I've learned about you, what I think your chances are.

And again, we're so lucky in the bay area. Like every lab here is basically amazing and awesome. So you can't really go wrong with any of the labs around here. 

[00:11:38] Griffin Jones: How often does someone ask you that? 

[00:11:41] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I mean, my patients are really educated, so those conversations sometimes has come up, you know, maybe like one out of 50 patients will ask me the question.

[00:11:49] Griffin Jones: One out of 50. 

[00:11:50] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah 

[00:11:51] Griffin Jones: Yeah. That's not a lot. And it was amazing to me cause when I first came into the field, I came through surveying patients. And they talked about success rates in the clarity of success. There was a theme that came up, but like one in 50 is not a lot. And also it's not one of the most traffic pages or the highest converting pages.

There was a discussion about start and marketing guidelines at ASRM couple years ago is the Denver one. And I had my laptop and I opened it up while the speakers were talking. And I went into some of our clients, Google analytics, and it just looked at their most traffic pages and their highest converting pages and success rates weren't in the top 20 for IVF. 

[00:12:35] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yes. And I think patients know that it's not so much about what's reported. It's about like how they feel at the clinic. And obviously, you know, that's really important about being heard and cared for, but also like, depending on where you are, some patients just don't have. You know, they don't have a choice as far as like which lab that they can go to because they have to stay close to home for different reasons. So, yeah. 

[00:13:00] Griffin Jones: I don't want to say that it's not important because I've heard patients say so many times about how important is, I'm just sharing what, how the behavior seems to map out from what we can actually measure. And it seems like other things are much closer to the main influence of the decision. So, okay.

So you, well, you have this flexibility to be able to accommodate patients at different labs. You don't own your own lab. It took you about a year to, to wean off of the insurance drug. I think that there's probably a louder, a lot of people list. Well, now you might call it the employer benefit drug too. And that can be a mis-characterized, I mean, there's many people that aren't going to get care otherwise, so I'm not dismissing insurance or employer coverage. I think it's a net benefit for people. So I want to make that perfectly clear. I'm just saying on the other side that I do see providers being the ones to get squeezed very often, they're in the middle of this and I've seen some of the reimbursements that people get and it's like, they're not even breaking even as you said, in some cases. 

[00:14:17] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: And there is one of me, I have 17 full-time employees. I can't survive on insurance with the volume that I'm at, not owning an IVF lab, it's just not feasible at all. So with the amount of time I want to provide, you know, no matter who you are, every patient to me is VIP.

And I want to make sure that I can, you know, provide that level of care without feeling like Costco, like, you know, just so many people coming in and out. I can't give so much of myself if, if I'm doing that, I'm already seeing a lot of, I'm seeing over 30 patients a day as it is. I do all my own scans.

And so I had to do something to, to actually basically limit the practice a little bit as well. 

[00:15:00] Griffin Jones: Why do all your own scans? 

[00:15:03] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I feel like, you know, I went into IVF or fertility medicine wanting to take care of patients and wanting to do my own scans, my own retrievals, my own transfers. And I feel like sometimes the date of loss in between scans when you have inter observer variability, and sometimes, you know, other people making decisions about, you know, what you should do based on data, not other people, but sometimes the data is not consistent because they're different people scanning.

And I feel like that's always been important. And those are the things that I see when I review records and I can see things like, oh, that's interesting. You can see that, you know, you can tell that different people were doing the scans throughout the cycle. Like I had a patient once and many times where she would find different people scanning her in one cycle and that I think it could have affected her care.

And so that's why it's important to me to scan my own patients. And it also provides that, you know, they hear from me. I have that sparkle checklist. You probably know it, I give them all the elements of what's going on the size of their follicles, the protocol. Am I happy? The lining, when the renewables going to be, with the lining looks like you know, all that kind of stuff.

They'll get that in real time without wondering what's going on. 

[00:16:08] Griffin Jones: Well, it seems to me like you're in a position to be able to make that decision for yourself that doesn't seem like pure efficiency, but that's okay. This is your business, your practice. And you're in a position to make that decision because you're not being squeezed on margins and other areas, or are having to bring in a tech to do it for to be able to pay that bill. So I suspect that there's probably a lot of people listening that envy you, that are in that smaller practice group. And especially like the one to two doc groups that if they're selling to private equity, it's not at a big, multiple, maybe it's enough for them to be happy with retiring, but it's not the same as like these seven doctor groups are getting.

And I suspect that there's a lot of, one to two REI practices, listening that envy you and want to be able to do this, but they're also scared. They think that well I might not be able to meet that. And I might not be able to, to make ends meet that way, meet the volumes that we'd need to do if insurance or an employer benefit company, isn't paying for it.

So, do you see this drying up at all? Do you see on the horizon? I don't think that there's enough cash pay patients out there as employer benefits, increases insurance coverage and mandates increase. 

[00:17:28] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: No, I don't see that. I think there's plenty of patients for all of us and it's never about competition. I don't necessarily see me as someone that people would envy.

I feel like if anything, they might feel sorry for me because I work the number of hours that I work seven days a week. I see patients, Saturdays and Sundays. I'm not taking a single day off this year. The only day I'm not seeing a patient is on Christmas day. And so most people don't want that kind of life.

And so I've chosen that for myself, for my own reasons, just because of just my personality and who I am. But I think most people would like the option to not scan every single patient, but still be able to communicate that with their patients and you're right. They might have that fear that they can't do that just because there is just not something that they actually want to do. Most of my friends were like, I don't want to do what you do. I don't want to see patients seven days a week. I want to break. You're crazy. And I'm like, yeah, I I'll take that. I'll take it as a compliment. 

[00:18:21] Griffin Jones: Yeah. I know that you're a meteorite.

And it's like, when I hear people talk about like entrepreneurs or people that just have seemingly unlimited bandwidth and energy. That's at least how I perceive you. I don't know deeply personally, but I also don't see how you do, like, it's not a requirement that you have to scan your own patients because they're not taking insurance. Right?

[00:18:42] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: No, not at all, but I think patients come here because they want that. They know that they're gonna get that.

You know that they miss that in their last cycle, they missed, like they share experiences where they did an entire cycle and never saw a doctor once. And then they met the doctor that was going to do the retrieval for them. And that's not the doctor that they met at their new patient, 15 minute video call, you know, and so people want that. And so they know that they're going to get that here. So that's why they come. 

[00:19:09] Griffin Jones: Well, staying on the topic of the scans. What's the difference between the physician being with the patient the entire time for their scan versus having a tech do it? And then the physician popping in and saying, oh, hey, catching up for three minutes. 

[00:19:22] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I mean, it's efficiency. I mean, I can do a scan, communicate with the patient. I actually do my own blood draws. So within like 15 minutes, I can have it all done. The patient feels heard and she's sharing her symptoms. I'm telling her what to do next and I can make the decisions right then and there without any delays.

So I think it's more efficient than having someone do it. I pop in, I say, oh, I'll meet with you the end of the day, we'll have another interaction. It just seems more efficient to doing all the same. 

[00:19:47] Griffin Jones: How many of your patients come from outside of the bay area? If you had to ballpark percentage wise?

[00:19:54] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: A lot. I mean, I think this week I have at least five in a hotel, doing a cycle with me. So if I were to say percentage wise, probably at least 15, maybe even 20% are from of town.

[00:20:07] Griffin Jones: So that has to do with the funnel that you have from the top. They're finding you from social media, from your podcasts, from your mainstream media appearances.

[00:20:19] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: That's right, exactly right. So people seem to like code in the New York times or you know, some other piece you're right on the news of the today show. Then they'll see my name and they'll reach out and they'll do their Facebook research. They'll go into the groups on Facebook and then have people also say, oh, I went to her and then it's more affirming for them to reach out and set up an appointment. 

[00:20:37] Griffin Jones: I should have asked Dr. Eyvazzadeh, if, she uses EngagedMD, because technology making life easier for your patients and making the work experience better for your team is EngagedMD. In a nutshell, you've got a limited amount of time to cover with each patient, EngageMD allows your consults to be more productive.

So you can do what you're meant to be doing nurses can doing do what they're best at you're spending less time answering the same questions. You're then tailor, fitting that time to more educated patients, patients with truly informed consent because enrolling patients in EngagedMD is easy. It takes like 20 seconds.

Then they get some of their time back. The patient that is because they're watching the video modules with their partners on their time. They're completing the knowledge checks with their partners. All of this is sequential. They're signing and submitting. And EngagedMD documents, everything so that your physicians, your nurses, your team members, don't have to get back to doing what should be involved in a technological solution.

Anyway, if you go to engagedmd.com/irh, they will give you 25% off your implementation fee. That's EngagedMD.com/IRH now back to our conversation with Dr. Eyvazzadeh 

So you've got this massive top of the funnel, which I was asked, which is what I was grinding my brain about. The time, we talked on this podcast, why, why? And it makes complete sense because the wider, the funnel that you have, the more you can have mechanisms in place that allow people to self-select, if there's one type of not one type, but if there's a narrower funnel of people that may be able to be a good fit for your model. And we do that with our firm, like Inside Reproductive Health is for everybody. I want everybody to listen to it. I want the drug reps listening to it. I want docs listening to it.

It's mostly practice owners and execs, but I want everybody in the field to pick this up like it's the wall street journal. That a business person reads or watches, Forbes. I want people to watch, listen, to read Inside Reproductive Health every morning. I want this like weekly podcast to be just the beginning and I want to create a lot more content for big top of the funnel, but then I have a very, you know, kind of narrow bottom of the funnel. I don't really have sales calls with people because I don't have a sales team. I don't want to hire a sales team. I have my delivery team. I have people that manage accounts, but I don't want to hire like this entire sales apparatus. So I've got this big top of the funnel, social media, the podcast, the speaking, and then the middle of the funnel is all about our points of view, of how we do things.

And then the bottom of the funnel is like, if you want to engage us, here's this $600 engagement that that allows you to test it out. And I don't really talk with people. If somebody wants to send their marketing director, I don't talk to them to me, that feels like an insurance equivalent of like, no, that's not a good fit for us.

 And, you know, I might talk to a principal for 15 minutes, but it's just about our process. And if they want that $600 offer, that's, if there's no commitment that gets people in and hopefully I've created enough content to help them decide for themselves, if they're a good fit or not. But how do you narrowed down that funnel when you have such a huge top of the funnel? People are seeing you from all over the country. How do you start to narrow it down? Well, We don't take this insurance. We don't take these employer benefits. This is why do you weed that out so that people aren't pissed at you when they're contacting you.

[00:24:29] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: It's simple AI. So I have an amazing AI tool. So for anyone who's listening, who is interested, I work with no hold. N O H O L D. And I'm working on systems to automate many things that are inefficient in the practice. And so we've started with new patient onboarding. So it's basically a virtual assistant that we've created with their help, of course, they actually created it, but all the language comes from me and my assistants here, so that patients at the start of the onboarding process understand what their they're onboard. And for, and their onboarding for an experience with a physician that will not take insurance. And so before, you know, when people were picking up the phone, my new patient coordinator would get all the information and then tell them, by the way we don't take insurance.

Is that okay with you? And you're right. Like, that's not how it should be. So from the very beginning, It's you know, welcome to the practice. Click here. If you want to be a new patient, then the very next thing says, Dr. Aimee does not participate with any insurance companies. It's self pay only. Please click here to continue.

And if you don't want to continue, we send you a really nice message about my IVF classes of courses. EggWhispererSchool.com is where people can go. So if people don't want to engage. Like formally through being a patient, you can certainly take one of my classes that I do on IVF or egg freezing or fertility testing.

[00:25:52] Griffin Jones: So are they seeing this only after they contact the practice or is there some content that you put out in different forms? 

[00:26:02] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah, so it's we actually don't do any consults without patients going through the website first. So if someone were to call the office, we would simply say, please go to the website and click schedule a consult, and then they'll find the information right there.

And then they can continue the process. It's about 10 to 15 minutes of questions that they answer. And then my new patient coordinator will get them into the portal, send them all the forms they need to sign and get the medical records and schedule appointments.

[00:26:28] Griffin Jones: This is another benefit too. That's another bottom of the funnel requirement that I think people would love, but the top of the funnel isn't big enough.

And this is another way of looking at why you want the top of your funnel to be larger. So most people today are busier than they have been in years. They have more new patients that they know what to do with in 75% of cases. If you have a wider funnel, the wider your funnel is the tighter, you can make the, the requirements of the middle and the bottom of the funnel.

And for most people, I think that they would love that if their patients had, to do that before they scheduled a new consult, but they don't feel like afford the attrition for those that wouldn't do it. 

[00:27:24] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah. And you can include even insurance, you know what I mean? It's not just using a tool like this isn't just for people who are like me, you can use it for insurance and then it would capture the insurance information right away. And then it could, that information can go to the insurance. The insurance folks in the office that, you know, check benefits and tell the patients with their benefits are before they come in to prevent again, that the hard part of having insurance is when you get to the clinic and then you're told something that is different than what your insurance told you, and then there's issues surrounding that.

But, you know, I'm so lucky that I don't have to deal with anymore.

[00:27:57] Griffin Jones: So there seeing this, which in the no hold was the AI? 

[00:28:02] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah, no hold,is the company that I use. Yeah. So they're the one that set it up and they're working on onboarding other clinics as well. 

[00:28:08] Griffin Jones: And so that's still at the bottom because of the funnel, because that's when people are contacting you, do you have it in like the middle of the funnel?

Like the videos that you do or do you let people know, even before they contact, we don't accept insurance?

[00:28:21] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: No, it's not something that I advertise or talk about on my podcast because my podcast is really for, you know, education for everybody, for the masses. I don't put it out on my blog articles, like in asterix, by the way, Aimee doesn't accept insurance.

It's just something for patients who are ready to meet with me, then they can get onboarded and they'll find out at that point.

[00:28:43] Griffin Jones: Do you ever get people that are pissed at that point? 

[00:28:48] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I haven't, I mean, if they're pissed, they don't let me know. I mean, certainly they're sad, you know, sometimes people contact me through Instagram for example, and they're like, do you take my insurance?

And I say, no, I don't, but I'd happy to give you a second opinion on your case. And then I'm happy. to like do that warm intro with a doctor in your area that I feel like would be best suited for you or but I've never had anyone get pissed at me in space. I mean like, no. That is no.

[00:29:13] Griffin Jones: Yeah, it must be my face.

There's a lot more easy to get pissed. And maybe it's the beard. Maybe it's maybe it's the, the hair. I don't know, but I do getting people basically to go from the top of the funnel, to the bottom pretty effectively. And that could have your, you were joking, but it could have to do with your persona. Maybe I know that we've had to invest more in the middle of the content because sometimes it do get people pissed at me when they're reaching out.

And they're like, and it tends to come from the industry side more because we serve the industry side and we think a lot of what we do translates to it, but we have definitely, we think we still know more than any regular marketing agency, but we have not built the systems to the degree that we have for practices and so we tend to do, a little bit more consulting upfront, and so it's a bit more expensive and some people are like, well, it sounds like you're just charging to get to know our situation. Like, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. I charge you to get to know your situation. And I think what you have to do to be able to do something like this, where you are inevitably going to have to turn many people away.

And in your case, you're sending people to other channels that do need care in order to be able to do that. You have to have other places that you can refer to them and have resources for them. So I don't feel bad about turning people away because I put out a hundred and thirty episodes of Inside Reproductive Health and articles upon articles have really in depth points of view on physician outreach systems and IVF conversion systems and things that take me 20 hours to create.

And so I feel like, you know, if somebody is like, well, we think we should just be able to talk to you. It's like, if I haven't given you enough information to decide that 600 bucks or $1,500, then I haven't done a good enough job, but I do have those things to be able to give them for free. And the vast majority of people are understanding and so you have that. So you talked about some of the things that you do, what are some of those resources that you give people when they are in a position where they can't afford to pay out of pocket? 

[00:31:27] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Well, my IVF classes. So I have a live class every month. I have an egg freezing class, for example, fertility awareness class, like teaching people, what level, you know, what to get checked, you know what to ask your doctor.

So those classes are pretty affordable. They're anywhere from like 30 to $60. And then have my blog and then my YouTube channel and then the podcast. And so, you know, those are the different ways that people can engage with me without paying to, to see me formally as a doctor. I always tell them, obviously that whatever I share with them is not to be considered an expert opinion because I'm just sharing information and not medical advice and soon hopefully in the next, you know, six months, I'll have an app where people can engage with me more formally without the being fully onboarded as a patient. And that might be a price point, kind of like a subscription model where they can get their questions answered. And for me, it's going to be helpful because right now I get questions, there's so many different social media channels, and it's hard. I feel bad. Like, I want to reply to people, but I just can't. Cause I can't go back. Like if I ask, you know, someone will be like, you know, what do you think about this account? Well, I can't engage back and forth with them because I'll lose with the number of messages I get.

I won't be able to go back to that. But with an app, for me, it'll be really nice because I'll be able to track the questions and be able to answer them. And then that would be a really fun thing and hopefully remember the entrepreneurial side of me, you know, I don't plan on working forever. Right. We all end up not being able to work at that mean I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, but this could be something that. 

[00:32:54] Griffin Jones: I thought you did plan on working forever, I thought you are just gonna, do a retreival and then keel over. 

[00:33:01] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: That's probably what's going to happen my grandfather, God, rest, his soul did that.

[00:33:04] Griffin Jones: I remember that story.

[00:33:06] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yep. So I, hopefully will not, you know kill over like the Peloton guy. I hopefully won't do that, but you know, that might be something, you know, cause I don't have a practice to sell. I don't think there's much to sell when it comes to, you know, what I do, but that might be something that would have value in the future for somebody.

[00:33:24] Griffin Jones: Well, if you want it to, you could absolutely sell that brand as a huge funnel for somebody. So there's something to sell there. Well, I have that for another topic, but I think that having the subscription model something that's low cost, having all of the free content, including the classes, something that's free is absolutely necessary to do something like that, you do it, we do it. But if somebody contemplating this idea, Yeah, you have to be able to give people something, especially because they're turning to you for something so serious. And so I don't think that you can do this without doing that. I mean maybe you could viably, but I think it would be a liability to reputation.

And also, I think you probably feel pretty crappy if you had to turn people away, completely empty handed.

[00:34:13] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Right. 

[00:34:14] Griffin Jones: So I still think that some people are envying. I still think that some people are listening to to this thing. And while I wonder if we could pull this off, you talked about how much you're working, but is that a requisite for being a self pay only group. I feel like to me, it seems like just you, like that's just Aimee Eyvazzadeh but somebody could work the same as, as, as they did when they're taking insurance. Right. Or sometimes even less because you would have less staff now, you'd have to have less billing staff and so much less resources dedicated to that. It seems like you could work less. 

[00:34:53] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: My issue is saying no. So I have people like that will reach out today and they'll be like, I just found out my IVF cycle didn't work. Can you get me in for a cycle this weekend? My fear is going to start and I'll be like, yes.

So I can't say no and not work as hard as I'm doing. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, I'm trying to say it's like, that's the issue that I have is if someone needs me, I'm not going to say, well, call me in March and then I'll put you on a list. There's no list with me. Once you're in, you're in and I, you know, once you're my patient, I will get you in right away.

And so that's, the issue is just the number of, patients ask me, like, how many people are you doing IVF at at one time? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't count. I don't think about like, when I'm going to see my last patient of the day, I just like look forward to each encounter and just keep going. And I don't have that kind of monitor in my head.

[00:35:44] Griffin Jones: Does that number keep going up then? 

[00:35:47] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah. 

[00:35:48] Griffin Jones: It gets more than it was last year than it was two years ago than it was three years ago. 

[00:35:52] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Yeah, it is. 

[00:35:53] Griffin Jones: Okay. And so for you, it's just squeezing those patients into whatever minutes you have in the day for other people, that's going to look like an increasing wait list.

Which many of them are already dealing with? I think for some people there think, okay, well, is my market big enough? Like the New York, San Fran's LA. Those are the markets where I see this working. I don't think the Fairbank's Alaska's or the Buffalo new York's or some of the smaller markets, but then I'm wondering about the Houston's, the Dallas's, the Charlotte's, the Atlanta's and I think you probably could, if you had the right funnel, especially if, as you say 15% of your patients are from out of town.

[00:36:36] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Right. And I wake up, you know, I start seeing patients at 6:00 AM. So if I have, let's say my equitable scheduled at nine, and I have patients between nine and 10, I'll just start an hour earlier to see them. So it's not unusual for me to start at 6:00 AM and then I'm not, I don't, I basically don't stop working until I sleep. 

[00:36:53] Griffin Jones: Well, other than that, of your inability to say no, because I think other people would just say, okay, well, let's make that a wait list. And even if we get to that, it's a good problem to have, because it, this wages are concerned that we wouldn't be able to meet the volume without having the insurance or the benefit paid patients.

Is there anything else for people to consider before they jump into this. And one thing I'm thinking about is the debate I had with Dr. Hariton on this show where I see more people doing this because I think that there's too many people that feel that are at a point where they're like, well, this just economically the decision is made for me.

And So anyway, before they make that decision, what else do they need to consider? 

[00:37:40] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: You can't do what I do and own a lab. You just can't. I mean, I couldn't possibly.

[00:37:44] Griffin Jones: Wait the minute but we are in the episode that I asked if you could do this with a lab and you said you could. 

[00:37:48] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I mean, no, no, you could go cash pay, but you can't do it the way I do it.

You can't see as many patients without cause the lab would take more like it would just be another thing to deal with. Like I'm already dealing with the practice and the HR stuff with employees and hiring and day-to-day stuff. I couldn't also then focus on the lab. And deal with that as well.

You know what I mean? So the reason why I can do this and do it as much as I do is because I don't have the responsibility of overseeing a lab at all. You know, I don't have to worry about staffing the lab and you know, what's going on there because other people who are really good at it, way better than I would ever be, are doing it for me.

[00:38:31] Griffin Jones: I just love people in business that makes their own thing. Like to me, that's what being an entrepreneur is about or a small business owner. They're not exactly the same thing, though. They're on the same spectrum, but the. Ideal of either is being able to craft something that you want. And if you craft something with a huge scale, you have to meet to the demands of the marketplace.

But if you're crafting something, that's, it doesn't have to scale to the entire market. You could say, all right, well, is there a segment of the market that allows me to do exactly. I want to do it doesn't matter if, if it's not for a hundred percent of the market, if I can even craft out 1% or two temper, whatever, it might be just enough to support the vision that I want to meet.

That's what I really admire about different business owners that do that. And I think you are just like, you're the example, the standard of who that person is. So how would you want to conclude to our audience? That is mostly. execs in the field. And a lot of them are practice owners, whether they're thinking about this or whether they've dismissed it, how would you want to conclude about this model of building a practice that self pay and so that you can run it the way you want to. 

[00:39:54] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: I would just say, don't be scared. You know, the patients will come. If you provide the best care, they're gonna find a way to work with you, even if it means not working with their insurance. And so if you care about people, they're going to know, and they're going to feel like they're not going to leave your practice if you make the change. 

[00:40:11] Griffin Jones: Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh. I know how damn busy you are and so I appreciate you obliging me to come back on Inside Reproductive Health within less than a year of each other. Thanks so much for coming back on. And I hope people really enjoyed the show. 

[00:40:27] Aimee Eyvazzadeh: Thank you, Griffin. Pleasure to be on hope to see you again, maybe in another year.

[00:40:31] Griffin Jones: It'll be my pleasure.




120: Inside 3 Fertility Business Sales with Richard Groberg

This week on Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin has a conversation with Richard Groberg, a man who helped facilitate the acquisitions of The Sher Institutes to Integramed, eIVF/PracticHwy.com to private equity as well as many other business owners exit their business through rollups, sales and consolidations. A common thread through a lot of acquisitions is that he sees fertility business owners lose out on millions upon the sale of their company because they don’t categorize their accounting correctly. Richard gives his insights on roll-ups/consolidations from a private equity group, and he believes that he has not found a consolidation that has been successfully operated.

This episode covers: 

  • How to get the biggest evaluation of your business

  • How to survive the ‘proctology exam’

  • Why roll ups from a private equity groups haven’t been successful

  • When it makes sense for an owner to sell his/her business

Episode Sponsors

Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.

Richard’s Information

Email: Richardgroberg@outlook.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rsgadvisorsllc

Mentioned in this Episode:

Built to Sell book: https://builttosell.com/

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[00:00:00] Griffin Jones: If you're thinking about selling all are part of your fertility company. You're going to want to listen to this episode. It doesn't matter if you have a practice or a pharmacy or an EMR or a lab manufacturing company. You want to listen to this episode with Richard Groberg and you'll probably want to listen if you've sold and maybe you're having some sellers remorse.

Richard gives his framework for. What, how he helps practices and other companies in the fertility field to sell. He's been in the field for many years. And in the past three years, he has helped with, uh, three major sales. So we talk about the. This is an area that I don't have complete expertise in. I've never bought or sold a fertility company.

And so when Richard gives very specific examples, I don't, I might reference a conversation that is particular to an episode. It was publicly discussed on this shell. Otherwise. You know, de-identify whoever I'm talking about, because this is not my area of expertise, why I had Richard on. And if you have a different point of view, you're welcome to come on the show too.

If there's something that said that you disagree with, tell me what that is. And come on the show. The show is an open platform and anytime. I have some money on that talks about some of the challenges or problems with private equity. I'm willing to have somebody come on that talks about the pros of private equity.

We keep this conversation pretty balanced, but if there is something that you disagree with, you're welcome onto the show. And otherwise just enjoy this conversation with Richard Groberg.

 

[00:02:20] Griffin Jones: Mr. Groberg, Richard, welcome to Inside Reproductive Health. 

[00:02:24] Richard Groberg: Good morning. Happy to be here with you. 

[00:02:26] Griffin Jones: You're on because my knowledge of clinical operations go so far. That's why I have clinical ops guests on, and my knowledge of finance goes so far as for my firm. I try to shade in all of the parts of the Venn diagram, where sales and marketing overlap with finance and overlap with ops, but I'll never be a pure ops consultant.

I'll never be a pure finance consultant. When I reach the borders of the realm, I need to talk to somebody else. And one of those people is you, and I don't know why it took me randomly bumping into you in Las Vegas to think I need to have Richard on the podcast, but I'm glad I did. And I'm glad you're here.

So I want to start our segue into the topic with what have you been helping fertility centers for a while, but what have you been helping them do specifically in the last two or three years? 

[00:03:12] Richard Groberg: Well, in the last three years, I've had a couple of different avenues where I've helped fertility businesses.

I've worked on three transactions where fertility, one fertility practice, and two fertility related service businesses have partnered with larger groups and private equity, both to get a partial cash out and also to get access to management resources, to build more depth for long-term growth. I've also worked with smaller practices that were dealing with selling part of their practice to a doctor trying to expand do I open satellites? How do I buy other practices? And most recently, thanks to you. I assisted a fertility doctor who was a minority owner of her practice uncoupled from a corporate roll up group and become an independent practice majority owned by her.

[00:04:08] Griffin Jones: So of the three where you helped sell to a private equity group, where they all private equity of those three, where some of them high net worth individuals, where they all private equity firms that they were selling to, or where some private equity firms and some were networks backed by private equity firms.

[00:04:26] Richard Groberg: Two of the deals were sales of, of related companies that were related to the fertility industry specific practice highway EIV F and ReproTech. Two private equity that was interested in the space. I also helped Boston IVF wanted to rid parts of its original sale to the British group.

That was a large fertility network outside the United States, but had no presence in the United States that would also was ultimately private equity back. But it was a pretty large sort of fertility roll-up. 

[00:05:00] Griffin Jones: So when you get a call, it says, Richard, we're interested in doing this. I'm interested in maybe, maybe I'm interested in exiting or maybe I'm not interested in exiting.

I want to just expand and bring in someone to help with that scale. What is your checklist? Like? How do you start the process to it's a big elephant. So what is the first bite that you take? 

[00:05:25] Richard Groberg: Well, the first couple of steps or a little bit like a health exam for potential fertility patient have to understand the nature of the business, its financial performance, its challenges, its growth opportunities and what the goals are of the current owners.

There are cases where owners want to sell on leave. There are cases where owners want to partially sell, but need access to resources that they don't have for growth or the depth of management. So the first step is a practice evaluation, not, not a valuation, so to speak like a formal evaluation, but assess the health and the goals of, of the practice.

After that is the part that most people who've never been through this before. Don't understand and forgive the terminology, but I've called it the proctology exam on steroids of, it's not as simple as you call up somebody and say, I want to sell and you give them a couple of numbers and they shake hands and the deal's done.

That's where the process starts. They do an extensive evaluation. They do due diligence. They review your contracts, they review your financial numbers and your, your, your pregnancy rates and other statistics. And before you're prepared to do that, you have to get your house in order. So there's a lot of housekeeping to be done to prepare for that, that extensive painful review.

The determined is the price we've agreed to in the terms fair. And am I getting what I think I'm getting from the buyer's perspective? A lot of times these companies, because they're private businesses aren't necessarily prepared for the scrutiny in terms of expenses that you run through the business that most private companies do, that might not remain after a transaction.

And I can tell you all kinds of fun stories about unusual things.

[00:07:21] Griffin Jones: Like the business trip to Hawaii. Shout out to Dr. John Frattarelli. Cause I bet everybody wants to visit Dr. Frattarelli because oh, well that was good. We took the family and we stayed for two weeks, but it was for visiting Fertility Institute of Hawaii.

Is that what you're talking about? 

[00:07:37] Richard Groberg: Oh, yeah, I would give you some examples or the car that you expensed, or the fact that you're paying your mortgage and utilities and all your vacation expenses. And this is an important concept. I had one scenario where a business thought it was making $3 million a year because that's what he saw in his bottom line.

But between one time expenses that aren't recurring. And personal expenses running through the business. By the time we got done evaluating it and recasting their financials to properly reflect those non-recurring and what I call private company expenses, he actually was making $4 million a year. And when a buyer is coming in to pay, I'm picking a number for illustrative purposes, 12 times your profits, that extra million dollars of, of, of profitability that you can substantiate and prove in that particular case, put another $15 million in his pocket.

[00:08:37] Griffin Jones: I've jotted that down because I want to come back to that and get some examples from you. I want to try to go in the order that I'm thinking of you dealing with fertility companies that are in this process, you mentioned the first is, is assessing their goals. One goal might be exiting.

Another goal might be having financial capital to, to scale or to take over some other business side of the operation in those two. What are two different paths for those two different goals? Why are those two goals important? Like why is it important to make a distinction between the two? 

[00:09:13] Richard Groberg: Well, if I'm buying a fertility practice and let's just say it's a three doctor practice and two of the doctors want to retire and go away.

As the buyer, what I'm buying is not as valuable. And obviously the purchase price is not as high as look, I want to partially cash out. But I can't really compete. I want to expand, but I need money to expand. I need access to other resources and I'm going to stay and I'm not going to take a hundred percent cash out.

The business is now more valuable to the buyer and will garner likely a higher purchase price. The two large transactions I initiated and negotiated for service providers to the industry got a very high valuation because the seller was staying and retained a 30 to 40% ownership stake in the business post-closing. He's got skin in the game. So that's an important distinction because at the end of the day, The buyer, if they're buying a fertility practice, the buyer is to a large extent buying the engine and the engine is the doctors running the practice and performing the service. 

[00:10:28] Griffin Jones: So it makes sense that if the seller's staying that the business would be worth more, especially if we're talking about providers and the scarcity of REI's, so it seems like if they're staying, then the practices worth more, but one perception that I have, or at least it seems as like the value is in it, for those that are exiting, like okay, I'm going to, I'm leaving the I'm going to retire in a year.

So whatever happens to the practice, I guess, is the decision of the people taking it over. I'm cashing out all of my equity and for, I guess, what is the upside for a seller staying as opposed to a long-term hold strategy of their asset and retaining all or more of the equity.

[00:11:19] Richard Groberg: Well, let me give you an example.

There's a practice in Utah that recently sold to Boston IVF. One of the doctors was retiring, but another doctor, who's an outstanding doctor, medical director. Who's older, but committed to stay for four or five years. And there's another associate there that practice obviously is more valuable to the buyer because there's continuity there.

But to the seller, he's getting now access to this big corporate group who hopefully will provide services better and less expensive leave in a solo practice can provide, give him access to recruiting and hiring other doctors, give him access to the network and hopefully. Two to three years out when he is ready to retire, his practice is bigger, it's more profitable and his ultimate exit will be at a higher valuation.

We can now slide into a whole other discussion of whether all the past roll-ups have worked and whether people who've sold into them for some future consideration have benefited or not the doctors who sold into Integer Med, it obviously didn't work, depending where you were in the spectrum of prelude.

Maybe it did work. Maybe it didn't work. Doctors who participated in ovation strategy benefited handsomely when ovation did a second transaction with another private equity group, I guess a year and a half ago at a higher valuation. They got a second payday that was successful for them. So there's always the promise of that.

It's no different than when a smaller practice that wants to get bigger buys another practice and they merge. And now the practice that got bought is now part of a bigger practice, theoretically, that could be worth more to that doctor later down the road than if they just gone on their own. 

[00:13:17] Griffin Jones: Okay, well maybe you can be the tie breaker in something that Dr. Andrew Meikle and Mark Segal each said in their respective episodes. And I don't want to paraphrase them too much. So I encourage people to go back to listen to the episodes. If my memory fails a little bit, go back to the episodes. But in each conversation asked about building value up until the end.

And if I'm paraphrasing Mark correctly, he felt that, it's sort of feudal just to keep adding value to the practice, right when it's too late, if you know, you're going to sell within a year and Meikle said, no you should be adding all the way to the end. And from my vantage point, especially when you're looking at that, for the case that you just talked about, we got three doctors in any given scenario, I'm not talking about a particular case.

We have three doctors, two of them are going to retire. One is going to stay. Well, it seems to me that if those, if that one is going to stay has a robust brand, that's attracting more patients. That has a recruitment pipeline that younger staff want to work at especially younger docs want to work at that.

I would want to keep that flywheel moving and invest in that until I'm out for the reasons that you talked about, but where do you fall on the debate of it's too late to add value. If you know, you're going to sell in a year versus keep doing it all the way to the end. 

[00:14:38] Richard Groberg: I, you never stop making your practice a better practice because a deal might not go through.

But I also believe, and I have a very close friend in the veterinary business. Who's been through a number of roll-ups. He operates an independent practice. Everybody wants to buy him. And he's like, I'm three years out when I'm, when I'm a year and a half hour, I need to start preparing so that when I go through that proctology exam on steroids, I'm prepared for the process.

But up until the day you close, you always risk something negative happening that gives the buyer an opportunity to renegotiate. So you constantly want to be making your practice more and more attractive unless you're selling and walking away. But even then again, one of the mistakes people make small practitioners and lots of businesses is they get so focused on the sale process. They lose focus on their business and suddenly something gets delayed and your volume is dropped by 20% and you're not as profitable. And the buyer comes in at the last minute and goes, you know, things have changed a little bit where to renegotiating the price or I'm having a hard time attracting the doctor you need because your practice isn't doing so well.

I mean, if Griffin, if you're walking into a, to a dance and you're looking for a date, I mean up to the very minute you walk in, you want to make sure that your hair is bright and your beard is straight and everything looks good. And there's nothing that gives a negative impression. So that's my view.

[00:16:14] Griffin Jones: So I want to ask you about the proctology exam and if I'm doing Mark Siegel's argument injustice, please listen, episode 100 and Mark if I'm still doing it injustice. You're welcome back on to clarify at any time. Let's talk about the proctology exam. Richard, what does this involve you? You mentioned that as the second step, but you said before the financial house has to come in order.

So let's talk about what that means in order to be prepared for the due diligence. 

[00:16:44] Richard Groberg: Oh, and a lot of industries, not just the fertility industry, private businesses don't necessarily keep their financials expecting third-party scrutiny. They run expenses through the business that are personal. They may not be tracking non-recurring or one-time expenses.

They may be expensing things that are most setups are things that should be capitalized, but for tax purposes, oh we bought this piece of equipment. Let's all expense it in year one. So that that data needs to be cleaned up. So it's ready for the review, from a perspective of a roll up group or private equity, who's going to have banks and financing sources and investment committee approvals to understand the financials and that all needs to tie to your contracts, your ownership structure.

So all of those documents and contracts and historical data and financials need to be ready.

[00:17:42] Griffin Jones: Meeting employment agreements, contracts with vendors. 

[00:17:45] Richard Groberg: Absolutely and again, most people not out of any fault they're operating private businesses. They never expected this. And all of a sudden, someone's at their doorstep saying, I'm going to buy you for 12 times your profits.

They're not prepared for this. And frankly, they don't have the time off and to stop and get prepared for it. And one of my other favorite expressions, if you've never been through this before, you don't know what you don't know about the process, about the descend on you, it can be consuming and overwhelming and you need to be ready for what's about to come.

Because again, it's not so simple as, oh, you're making $2 million a year. I'll write you a check for $24 million. I'll see you at the closing table in a week. 

[00:18:29] Griffin Jones: So with regard to the expenses that you said detract from the bottom line that are necessary for that against a multiple are worth that much more if they're added back on.

So is your advice to not take any of those as business expenses? Or is there another way of accounting for it? 

[00:18:51] Richard Groberg: They're there. I don't want to give away all the secrets, but there are ways to pet to track it or go back and recast it so that you can track it.

And like, for example, again, when a private equity group or roll-up group buys you, they have an independent accounting firm that does, what's called a quality of earnings review, which is like getting a 360 body scan. And if you can demonstrate that, Hey, these are the expenses that were personal or time, and here are the receipts and I can run a report that shows them, and I can provide you the backup to prove it.

And in the contract, they won't continue afterwards. Then you can get credit for. When I was in the animal hospital business, there were practices that didn't record all their cash. And then they'd have a little piece of paper that would show all the cash that got deposited in the account that never went through their POS system or accounting system.

If you can't prove it, the buyer's not going to pay for it. So there are different, I'm not suggesting that you don't do it, but you have to be able to track it and prove it. If you want credit for it in a transaction. 

[00:20:01] Griffin Jones: I don't want you giving away all the secrets, but you do have to give me a little bit of free consulting right now.

Here's the, here's an example. So one thing is because I'm not married yet, we'll be soon, but I'm not yet. I don't. And I've rented and living in different cities. I haven't itemized my own tax returns. So when I do charitable contributions, I don't have anything to deduct on my own tax returns.

So one of the charities that I support is Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos. It's dear to my heart. So many people listening have donated. When I've asked them and I'm so grateful for that. And so one of the things that I've done, you know, for example, is I will have Fertility Bridge sponsor a gala, and it will be Fertility Bridge advertising.

 We'll get the logo on the page and in the pamphlet. And I will invite fertility, doctors, fertility, clients, to the gala with me. So they're at my table and that's business networking. I don't know though that it's something it's not something you would do if someone else was running the business though, right?

Somebody else would pick some different kinds of avenue. So is the advice that I categorize that somehow differently? 

[00:21:10] Richard Groberg: The advice is if you know, now that at some point in the future, you're going to be borrowing money, selling partnering, track it, take the extra time to track it, categorize it. Even if you put it, like, if it's a personal expense and use QuickBooks, put a class code in for P so you can always run a report that everything that's P for personal.

So if you think now that you're going to have to do this going forward. When I work with new companies, if I know they're going to be raising money selling at some point, there are things we do from an accounting and tracking standpoint that anticipates the proctology exam a couple of years out so that you don't have to double back.

And say, okay. Mr. And miss bookkeeper go back and find every personal expense that you've run through the business and reposted with a code so that when we get to that point, you can prove it. 

[00:22:12] Griffin Jones: There's a book called Built to Sell, and I haven't read the book, so I'm not necessarily recommending, but if the audience is curious enough, we can link in the show notes, the books called Built to Sell.

But I believe the value proposition is to business as though you're going to sell it regardless of whether you do or not, that you have that it is a business that someone would want to buy. And that seems like a tenant of that having your books categorized in such a way. 

[00:22:40] Richard Groberg: Well, it's a good book. And again, that is good advice.

 If you've anticipated, you will save a tremendous amount of time, aggravation money and not getting distracted from continuing to manage your business by having to double back and figure all this stuff out at a later date, when you're ready.

[00:22:58] Griffin Jones: When you're helping fertility companies get their financial house in order, what are some of the main booby traps or the most common booby traps that you see when you're, when you're taking the PNL against the income statement or excuse me, when you're taking the income statement against the balance sheet, what are some of the common things that jump out to you?

Like, eh, this isn't right. Or something needs to be fixed?

[00:23:21] Richard Groberg: Well, it's the personal expenses and the non-recurring expenses that aren't tracked. It's I haven't reconciled my bank statement in a year. And my books are an up to date. It's, it's again in the cannabis business where I've done some work and what I used to be in the animal hospital business.

It's not recording all the business, I did. The other area in the fertility business is some doctor owners pay themselves big salaries and show little profits, some take little salaries, and then have all the profits. Well, if you're selling to a corporate group, you're going to negotiate what you're getting paid for your work as a doctor post-closing. So that's one of the other things that you have to have an understanding of and then recast your numbers to accurately reflect the past. As if it was the future post-closing. 

[00:24:12] Griffin Jones: I want to talk more about the due diligence and the proctology exam, but I remember what I wanted to ask you about when we were talking about goals and that was had to do with earn-out.

So is it simply the case of one goal as well? I'm just ready to leave the business or, and one is, well, I'm going to stay , is the case, even if you're going to sell, is there still an earn-out and how long is that typically that I need to stay for two years or I, or a year or three years. And how much of my buyout is tied to that earn-out? And how much should I expect to get in cash? You can talk about earnouts for a little bit.

[00:24:51] Richard Groberg: Let me address that first from the buyer's perspective, if I'm buying a fertility practice unless it's a large multi-doctor practice, a big part of the value is the producers. And if they're cashing out and leaving it's worth less So most buyers want one form or another of incentive. I call it a golden handcuff to incentivize and ensure the continued performance of the drivers of the practice, whether it's the younger doctors who were taking over or the existing doctors. So if, and by the way, I have another line, favorite expressions there.

That's why there are 31 flavors of Baskin Robbins. Well, every roll up group has a different way in which they like to do it. They want you to own part of your practice or have a profit participation or percentage of the revenues above a base or a percentage of the profits of a base. Or do you have stock in the, in the parent company or little, all of the above, you know, elevation, you still own part of your lab and you won't stock in the parent one way or another.

The practice is more valuable to the buyer. If the seller still has an incentive to grow the practice and grow the practice profitably for the bot. So for the buyer, the seller standpoint, if the seller is selling and staying, he wants to participate fairly again. If I, if I sell my, if my business is worth $60 million and I keep 40%, I sell, I take a partial cash now, and I keep 40%.

I want that 40% to be more valuable later on. That was part of the story of every roll-up group Ovation is the only one that's even partially worked with. There's been a profitable partial cash out for others, obviously Integra Med, didn't work and peoples, including mine and residual interest was worth zero.

So you want the interest of the buyer and seller to be aligned one way or another. So that business becomes more valuable. And when I eventually get my next cash out, it's for a higher number than today, because that's why I'm selling to you and letting you tell me what to do and putting your services in place and helping me grow focus, do more.

None of that matters if you're not improving my quality of life and, or making my residual interests more valuable later on. 

[00:27:25] Griffin Jones: We're talking about improving efficiencies to increase the value of a fertility company. When I think of improving efficiencies at a fertility practice, I immediately think of Engaged MD. Whether you're going to sell or not, we talk about how important it is to add value and increase efficiency to the end, to improve the quality of work for your employees and the experience for your patients. That's Engaged MD.

If you go to Engage MD's website, you'll see at the bottom of the homepage, it's like a CNN ticker of different client testimonials that they have saying we took what used to be a 90 minute consult and turned it into a 50 minute phone call. That's because Engaged MD is taking so much of the headache and the manual one-offs that your staff has to do that is not efficient for your staff and not effective for your patients and helps to scale that with their comprehensive ART eLearn  library, they're embedded knowledge checks, they're actionable patient comprehension, insights, compliance tracking, automation, automated patient reminders, video replay. This is just taking the manual labor that isn't efficient for your team to do and scales it to patients through software so that you can customize the time that you have with your patients and that experience to be just about them so that they're educated prior to treatments, that they have true informed consent so that you can deliver what should be delivered in the way that only you can. And they're coming in with a much better foundation. 

Go to Engage Md.com/irh and you'll get 25% off of your implementation fee by mentioning that you heard them on Inside Reproductive Health, or you heard them from Griffin Jones. And please do that if you're doing business with them, let them know that you heard them on the show because it's one of the things that allows us to provide you with more content and to keep giving you more resources like this episode. And we want to do a whole lot more. So please mention that and take advantage of what Engaged MD has to offer, because it's one of the simplest largest upside moves that you can make for your practice in 2022.

Now back to the show.

So for how long, because owning 40% of a company that one built is different than owning 100% of the company that one built and having all of the say. And I suspect that this is where a lot of the problems could come from as well.

I don't own the whole thing anymore. I, but I'm still on the hook for, uh, I'm still on the hook for. Listening to what the new leadership or the new ownership has to say. And I do have a financial stake in, in retaining this 40%, because how long does it, like when, when somebody sells partial, how long does that stay?

For 

[00:30:26] Richard Groberg: every scenario's unique, it depends on whether a doctor is 40 years old or 60 and, and what the goal is of the buyer. So again, every situation is different and unique. I mean, but understand that every private equity group, every buyout group, every roll-up group, no matter what they tell you, their goal is for them to either sell to somebody else at a higher price or go public.

So 

[00:31:01] Griffin Jones: is there typically, is there some sort of. Remaining buyout agreement. I don't know. You know, if you would call that a buyout agreement within the new agreement that, okay, if this isn't happening, the remaining partner has to sell their 40% or those typically in 

agreements, 

[00:31:18] Richard Groberg: Yes there has to be some mechanism for an ultimate exit when a doctor retires or dies, what happened no different than in a group, private practice, whether it's HRC or one of the other groups, you know, when someone's ready to leave retire or die, there has to be in mechanism to buy them out.

And for other people to get their equity, 

[00:31:41] Griffin Jones: do you have to have a mechanism for the evaluation in that agreement as well? So that, you know, well, we say it's worth it Well, I think we grew the value to this, and now my 40% is worth Y when you're saying it's worth X, is that evaluation in the agreement?

[00:31:56] Richard Groberg: Absolutely. I mean, and that's, that's no different in any kind of equity this morning. I was on the phone with someone who was offering me. Equity to join a board of directors. And I said, well, if you're issuing the equity every 

single year, how do we value it? So you have to mutually agree on a valuation methodology, whether it's you have an outside appraisal or it's the last transaction that raised money.

But yes, you have to, you have to button up every open issue so that both sides know what the future holds. 

[00:32:28] Griffin Jones: Okay. So you talked about the roll-ups that have happened in private equity. Can you first, how do you define a roll-up? Is it just any network? Consolidating, I guess consolidating in, in this instance is self-defined because they are moving more practices into their network or company of practices.

 First, can you define, roll up and then we'll talk about some of the things that people have to consider? 

[00:32:56] Richard Groberg: My understanding of roll up and roll out is a roll up is rolling in any business is rolling up other businesses in the same industry, a roll out is a strategy which could be part of a roll up where you're opening De novo locations.

So you might have a roll up rolling out satellites. You might have, you know, there've been some models out there that open new locations, you know Kind Body, which is opening new locations. That's a rollout, but they're, I know they also may be buying practices. So that is a roll-up and it happens, they've been roll-ups in the veterinary industry all over health care. Now in the cannabis industry, businesses are being rolled up. 

[00:33:41] Griffin Jones: So what are some of the considerations that for not just fertility practices, but any company that the fertility field should consider, if they're going to be a part of their being approached by a larger organization that wants to roll them up into their portfolio.

[00:33:58] Richard Groberg: So if I'm the seller it starts with, what are my goals? Am I looking to cash out and leave, or do I want to stay three years or five years? You know, this organ transaction that recently closed, they were looking to be part of a bigger group and have access to resources and have a partial cash out. But it's not, this is a very important point.

It's not just the price and the terms. If you're going to be there the morning after, operating your practice that you built and you've run, but now somebody else has bought you in. You have to understand that you they've now bought the right to make some decisions, to have veto power, to insist that you do certain things certain ways.

And once you get past price in terms, what the relationship is going to be like in the morning after? What are you going to insist that I do? What are you, what am I not going to do? What's your strategy for providing value added to my practice become as important, if not more important than thank you you valued my practice at 60 million. I'll take my check and go home. And the, this industry, unfortunately to date is littered with. Not overly successful roll-up strategies that have had ultimate exits, but why there are a lot of new groups coming in. I'll address that in a second. There are a lot of new groups coming in.

There's a lot of private equity money saying, wow, this industry is growing. Let's do here. What we did in other industries, you asked why hasn't it worked? I'll give you my personal opinion. The driving force of these practices, the doctors, whether it's in the animal hospital industry, where I used to be, or the fertility industry or other industries.

And when you buy a practice that is entrepreneurial and self owned, you're immediately, no matter what anybody says, de incentivizing partially the driver of the business. That's part one part two is. The roll-up only makes sense. If the roll up group creates economies of scale, can we purchase cheaper?

Can we negotiate? Third-party payer contracts? Can we do things that manage for your practice better and or less expensively than you can as an owner operator and to date? I don't want to talk specifics to date there, I don't believe there are many real success stories of people look in the mirror.

Now they're unbelievably fabulous practices like Shady Grove and others, Boston IVF, and others that CNY and Hunting HRC that within their own group have expanded, have centralized certain services have provided value added to their doctor partners. But when. You start getting 5, 10, 15, 20 of them across multiple states that aren't born within a central strategy named me one that's worked in a long term.

[00:37:16] Griffin Jones: I don't know that I can yet, but I would suppose maybe the jury is still out. And I suppose if we had some of them on, they would say that it is working right now and so.

[00:37:26] Richard Groberg: The jury is out and I hope that there are some success stories, because I think that if you can build better, if you can do the accounting better, if you can centralize buying, if you can do that for a solo practitioner and let them focus on running their location and the practice of medicine, it does create value for that practice.

So in theory it should work. 

[00:37:51] Griffin Jones: It sounds like you've got a strong point of view on this, and I'm wondering why haven't they been able to improve the economies of scale? You said that's one of the things that they have to do is their value proposition. I've got, I don't know that this is true in the fertility field, but I did observe something back.

My first job out of college, Richard was selling radio ads. Just here's the phone book, kid, go, go slang. Some radio ads, a hundred percent commission. I did that for five years in my early and mid twenties. And I noticed that it wasn't the McDonald's and the Verizon's and the Geico's. They got the deals because if the large companies, Citadel, Clear channel, Cumulus, Entercom gave those companies deals that would just obliterate their revenue. It was the additional people that got it was, you know, your local driving school, your local jeweler, the scrap dealer. Those are the people that I could cut any deal. I could sell five bucks in O8-O9 during the recession is a particularly egregious example, but I could sell, you know, things that were, should have been a $200 spot for $30. And I could sell the evening spots for five bucks a piece and give away the overnight spots and all of that type of thing. And so I don't know that that's happening in the fertility field. So one question is, is it? 

[00:39:05] Richard Groberg: Let me double back, because I need to amplify at the end of the day, the corporate group needs to be able to generate value above and beyond the cost of its infrastructure. So, and I remember back when I was in the animal hospital business and we had 15 locations, the cost of getting up to 15 of a corporate infrastructure was very high.

When you went from 15 to 30, you didn't need a lot of incremental infrastructure. So you have to have enough infrastructure to provide value added, to pay for that infrastructure and create value for the practices. Otherwise, you're just adding overhead that doesn't create value. The other side of the equation.

And I recently worked with a solo practice that was minority owned by a doctor, that was part of a roll-up group, where the question was, are the fees we're paying to the roll-up group worth the services we're getting the answer was no. Now we have to replace some of those services, but they were doing billing collections.

They were doing accounting. They were running the call center and the doctor right or wrong thought that she could do it better or less expensively for herself. If that's the case, then the roll up fails. But if the roll up can provide those services more efficiently, less expensively than the practice can and add value to the practice in a way that creates incremental value above the cost of that corporate infrastructure, meaning Integra med drowned under its corporate infrastructure among other reasons why Integra med fail.

[00:40:54] Griffin Jones: So is it because is it sometimes because there's redundancy or is it simply because of the inefficiency and expense I could do, I could be doing this myself more cheaply and cheaper and more easily. 

[00:41:10] Richard Groberg: Again, at the end of the day, if you choose to outsource something in your business to a third party, it's gotta be less expensive than what you're doing, free you up to do other things which will add value more than the cost or it's not worth doing.

So if a fertility doctor can let somebody else manage his billing and accounting and it frees he or she up, and the cost of having a third party doing it is less than having your own person doing it. Well, then it may be worth it. But if not, there's no value added because at the end of the day, it has to create $1 more value. Then the cost of doing it. 

[00:41:57] Griffin Jones: You mentioned thatIntegra med was kind of the pinnacle example of all of this. What are things that people should be looking for to make sure that they're not in a similar situation right now, or, you know, if you could have gone back in time three years or however long, I suppose to have people look out for the things that happened in that situation, what would you advise people that could be in a similar situation right now. 

[00:42:24] Richard Groberg: Let me, I'll give you an example. On another industry years ago, when I was in the animal hospital industry, there was a group that had raised money at what I call stupid valuations based on their promise of we're going to buy a hundred hospitals and we're going to add value to them of blah, blah, blah.

And they wanted us to sell our group to them for a combination of cash and stock in their business. And they were going to pay us an artificially high valuation. But most of the pro pro proceeds we were going to receive was in their stock. That was artificially inflated. So my partner then used to say, what makes us think that the stock we're getting at 15 times earnings is going to be worth that five years down the road?

 It's, doesn't make sense. Now sometimes fundamentals don't matter, but fundamentally if you're taking highly inflated stock in whatever business, and then the other is you have to believe in the strategy of the buyer that they'll be successful. Otherwise, again, you know, my partners and I took seven figures of stock and Integra med.

It was ended up being worth zero, you know, had we gone back. If we didn't believe their model, if we didn't believe that they were going to be successful, why would you make a bet in them by taking their they're artificially inflated stock? So you got to believe who you're getting in bed with, again, as I said earlier, especially if you're going to wake up the morning after and have to work with.

[00:44:00] Griffin Jones: When you're talking about, in this case, you're talking about inflated stock, but previously you were talking about the multiple of EBITDA that sometimes people are selling, selling at use the example of 12 and two or three years ago. I was wondering, I was with one of my earlier clients, and I told them that some people are selling at 12 times EBITDA

and they said, no, that's not true Griffin. They did not believe me. I said, it's absolutely true. I'm not saying it's true for everybody. The only times I've seen that high is through like very large groups selling to strategic buyers and you know, and having an established brand and clearly a system in place.

But I think four is like the lowest I've ever seen. So what's common nowadays? 

[00:44:41] Richard Groberg: Well, the market's gotten hot again, because there are groups that have emerged with private equity backing that believe that again, make them buy so big groups that have a brand that have multiple doctors seem to be selling a double-digit multiples in some combination of cash stock or ounce notes.

But again, if you're a one doctor or two doctor practice, you're not as worth as much to the buyer. So those multiples can be four or less. Because again, if you're the buyer and you're buying a one doctor practice, you're taking an enormous risk. And that's why when I work with smaller practices that are thinking about exiting, well, you need to get multiple doctors.

You need to open satellites, you need to buy people. You need to get bigger so that you're more valuable and perceived as more valuable to the next roll up group that wants to come into your market and expand their market share. 

[00:45:41] Griffin Jones: I want to do a whole episode on a topic that I think where a lot of upside is if there is a single doc group.

I actually think that's one of the areas where somebody coming out of fellowship or a young associate doc that is either leaving academic practice or they were at somewhere else for two years. That can make sense for them if it's done. Right? Because if that younger doc can bring in that younger doc is in a better position to recruit other younger docs and they have more time to do it.

And so if somebody vehemently disagreed with me when I was talking about this with them at MRSI. So I want to know if you disagree with, they think there's too much risk in that. But I see huge upside.

[00:46:19] Richard Groberg: If you find like I recently worked last year with a doctor in the Southeast great practitioner, great practice.

He's getting older. He's a solo doctor. He had a young doctor working for him and to sell that doctor equity on the cheap may seem like you're giving it away. But two, three years from now, when they're ready, when he's ready to sell or retire, his practice is significantly more valuable because it's a multi-doctor practice.

That's reduced the risk. You and I have a friend in Florida. We almost did business with a couple of years ago. In the last year he's hired two doctors. He's opened satellites. He's made himself. Instead of being worth three to four times, he's worth six to seven or eight times now when he's ready to cash out.

[00:47:09] Griffin Jones: So, okay. So we're looking at this, you know, if you could be looking at under four, if you're a single doc group, and if you don't have a brand and you don't have things in order, if you do have a really robust brand, you have a lot of docs here. You're talking a well in the double digits of multiple. So I'm still curious, like, do you think my economies of scale hypothesis applies to the fertility? Giving the local businesses the deals, but less so to the McDonald's and the, and the Geico is that one of the things that's hindering economies of scale, I don't know that this is happening at all in the fertility field, but I do see when I look at people in the industry, side's target list, their target lists are all the same.

It's these independent groups that still multiple doctors that are still the, the, the biggest in their market. If it's a mid market or at least the third biggest in a large market, these are the ones that everybody is courting. And so it seems to me like they would have more purchase power, but I could be wrong.

[00:48:11] Richard Groberg: Well, first of all, I want to comment about the lack of supply and demand is such that if there are a handful of roll-up groups with a bunch of private equity money saying, we need to go after this industry that drives up multiples because the law of supply and demand is that there are multiple companies bidding on the same handful of larger independent practices, which is why multiples are escalating now.

And I don't think most of these practices in the long run are worth 10 to 12 times. So I would say it's a great time to be a seller. There are some economies of scale there, theoretically should be some efficiencies of consolidation. I've seen aspects of it work. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean that a smart solo practitioner can't negotiate the same deals, but you only have so many hours in the day.

It's why practices hire practice managers, because that way the doctor can go back and practice medicine, deal with the patients and staff and leave someone else to do what they do better. If they can do it better. And if they can do it less expensively than the value they're creating, if it costs $2 to make one, it's not worth it.

But if it costs $2 to create five, well, then it's worth it. 

[00:49:31] Griffin Jones: What about, I guess if you're, you know, in your early forties and you own maybe half of a group or a third of a group, and you've got a one or two partners, and then there's a young associate doc in there is I, I guess I'm still, we, I asked you a little bit about the, the long-term hold strategy and, and I briefly read a paper from HBR Yales paper about that holding a whole longterm hold strategy is more profitable in the long run. When is it the more viable option if it ever is to just say, you know what, I'm going to own this thing for outright. I'm going to slowly increase the value and be a hundred percent or majority equity owner?

[00:50:15] Richard Groberg: There's no one right answer. But if I'm a 35 to 40 year old physician in this industry or the animal hospital industry, another industry, and I believe in myself and I believe in growing the practice and I have the wherewithal to do it unless I'm lacking something that a corporate group can give me, or I want to hedge my bet.

Why would I sell now? And you know, if you've convinced me that I should sell, and the residual interest is going to be worth much more, three years, I'll answer the question by telling you a story years and years and years ago, when I was buying animal hospitals, I met this guy in Westchester who had the largest animal hospital in Westchester.

He was making a ton of money and frankly, he was under-reporting about a million dollars a year. So he was really making a ton of money. And he said, why would I sell my practice now at five times my earnings, even if I add back the cash, when I'm 40 years old. And I said, there's no reason for you to, until you're ready to retire die, or you told me you eventually want to move to Arizona with your girlfriend and become a professional illustrator.

And he went you're right. Thank you. For being honest with me, two years later, he called me and said, I'm ready to go. So, you know, there was no reason for him to sell. He had plenty of money. He had plenty of growth opportunity. There was nothing that anybody could provide him that would add more value. Now, if someone comes in and says, I'll sell you an I'll buy you at 15 times your earnings, that means it would take 15 years for you to earn enough, to, to be equal in actually does come down to partially a mathematical equation.

And then, you know, our friend in Texas who sold his software company, reached a point where valuations were so high and he needed management help that it made sense, but until it made sense, it didn't. 

[00:52:27] Griffin Jones: Do you want to talk about some of the principles where you've done the deal and then you find out it didn't make sense and now you're unrolling up?

[00:52:36] Richard Groberg: Oh boy. I know we've only got a few minutes. There are a lot of cases where the roll-up group didn't perform the way it said it was going to perform and all those things I talked about didn't make sense. And, and especially for smaller practices, where does it make sense for the roll-up group to have a one doctor practice?

People have cut the umbilical cord and uncoupled. The complexity there is if the corporate group has been doing your billing, your collections, your accounting, your new patient generation, doing all kinds of things for you. You better be prepared to take that back in and manage it yourself and not disrupt, you're doing what Stephen Covey calls keep the most important thing, the most important thing and practicing medicine and running your practice. There've been lots of examples of where it's done. And it is because the corporate group didn't live up to the promises in the eyes of the seller. They didn't get me more doctors.

They didn't grow me. The services they're providing aren't worth what I'm paying for it. You know, I can't get anything done. So cut the umbilical cord. Let me do it myself. 

[00:53:48] Griffin Jones: Richard, this interview has been so much value for the audience. I think they're going to get a ton of value. I want to do a live event with you in 2022, where people can jump on and ask questions.

Are you open to that?

[00:54:01] Richard Groberg: I love to you, you can tell, I've been in this industry since 2001. I have a passion and a personal interest in the industry. You know, I've got lots of friends in the industry. This is an area where if I can answer questions. And help doctors through these different processes.

I love to help. 

[00:54:19] Griffin Jones: There are some episodes that I go back and listen to because I need to get all of that information. I can already tell that I'm going to be an early 2022 at the gym listening to this episode. So hello, future Griff, while your listening to this. Richard how would you want to conclude about the topic of selling a company in the fertility field, whether it's a practice or not any, whether it's a pharmacy or an EMR company or a lab manufacturer, how would you want to conclude? 

[00:54:47] Richard Groberg: Prepare for the process and make sure you have the resources to go through it, to understand what you're getting into and to live with what you're going to face the morning after

[00:54:59] Griffin Jones: Richard Groberg. Thanks so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health. We'll link to the places where you can find Richard and where are some of those places? Richard we'll link to your LinkedIn in the show notes. Where can people get ahold of you? 

[00:55:10] Richard Groberg: Through my LinkedIn is the easiest place or Richardgroberg@outlook.com.

[00:55:18] Griffin Jones: Connect with Richard. And Richard thanks so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health.

[00:55:23] Richard Groberg: I really enjoyed it 

No More 'Hurry Up and Wait': 4 Steps to Fertility Business Goal Setting That Speed Up Execution

“Hurry up and wait.”

Far too many fertility companies, practice or not, rush into their goals… only to abandon them when they realize that the strategies required to reach those goals require more work and investment than expected.

Whether they like it or not, all fertility practices are entrepreneurial enterprises. Still, many independent centers don't approach growth like their corporate competitors, who actively set and pursue explicit market goals. Corporate fertility groups sometimes set goals but fail to align their efforts to achieve them.  

When an REI practice is in a hurry to catch up to what competitive fertility providers are doing, they may make hasty decisions that paradoxically waste more time (and money).

Some example requirements of different business development strategies include

  • Reserving provider availability for subject matter expertise for digital content or events

  • Creating content to support an advertising or public relations campaign

  • Scheduling staff to stay late or stop seeing patients early to shoot video

  • Restructuring your call center to fix the attrition of new patient inquiries to consult

These are only a few.  When centers face challenges like these without a committed goal in place, they are far more likely to abandon the pursuit having wasted time, money, and effort. 

Some fertility centers even hire marketing personnel only to fire them in a year when they aren’t seeing the results they expected. 

The way out of the cycle is for fertility businesses to set and commit to (or not) goals in four steps.

Slow down to speed up

While goal setting produces real value for any business, in these four steps, we use examples that companies in the fertility field have to consider.

Stop the dreaded “hurry up and wait” cycle once and for all because when you slow down goal setting, it’s easier to speed up the growth of your REI practice.

The four steps of goal setting for fertility businesses are: 

  1. Opportunity

  2. Priority

  3. Alignment

  4. Resource Allocation

1. Identifying opportunities for REI practice growth 

Fertility specialists have no shortage of ways to grow their businesses — there’s a virtually endless array of services you can provide and demographics you can serve. Growth opportunities you could pursue include

For each potential opportunity, you first need to benchmark your current volume, set a goal, and calculate profitability. 

A basic formula you can use is (Goal Volume-Current Volume)Profit = Opportunity Potential

Using IVF cycles as an example:

Goal of 1,000 IVF cycles with a profit of $4,000/cycle = $4 million

Currently at 500 IVF cycles with a profit of $4,000/cycle = $2 million 

(4,000,000) - (2,000,000) = $2 million opportunity

At this stage, many practice owners look at the numbers and think, “We have to do everything!” That’s a natural impulse. You want to care for as many people as possible and you don’t want your fertility business to lag behind its peers.  

We’re not making any decisions yet, though. Pump the brakes and slow down so that you can move much more quickly when it’s time for execution.

2. Prioritize the ‘infinite’ goals of a fertility practice

Research suggests that having too many goals leads to diminished outcomes. That’s why it’s critical to narrow focus and prioritize. If every goal is the priority, none of them are the priority.

The prioritization calculation has many moving parts. In order to effectively prioritize, your practice needs to:

  1. Rank opportunities by profit potential using the calculation above.

  2. Estimate effort--goal against current capacity Does the goal represent unmet capacity that the practice can easily meet? Or, will you need to add more doctors, staff, office space, or equipment to your business?

  3. Subtract effort from goal. You may be able to pursue a more profitable service, but how much effort will it take to reach that goal?Ex: a practice wants to pursue fertility preservation instead of IVF, because of a higher profit margin. If their practice isn’t positioned well, or in a challenging market for egg freezing, filling out IVF capacity may be the quicker win.In addition to helping you rank priorities, estimating the effort of achieving a goal reduces the likelihood of wasting time, money, and effort by abandoning it.

  4. Consider your mission. You are a clinician first and a business person second. If  your personal practice is about advancing fertility preservation, serving LGBTQ+ patients, or treating recurrent pregnancy loss, that has to impact which goals you prioritize.

  5. Weigh brand/market liabilities, particularly strengths and weaknesses in the marketplace. If your practice doesn’t make a move on a certain opportunity, will a competitor take it over and make it difficult for your business to get back in the game? Will it make your brand appear antiquated if you don’t pursue?

You might worry that other goals will be ignored if you choose a single priority to focus on first, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Other areas of the practice almost always benefit from a snowball effect.

Goal Snowball

Here’s an example of how prioritizing one goal can benefit others. Let’s say an REI practice has ten physicians with very different workloads:

  • Two or three REIs have a higher than normal capacity and they have met it. They each do more than 300 retrievals per year.

  • Five REIs are each at a normal capacity of 180 retrievals per year.

  • Two or three physicians are below 150 retrievals per year so they are a financial and access-to-care constraint.


This group has many goals, but they have ranked specific provider volume as their biggest priority. As a result, they:


  • Streamline their call center to balance waitlists. They achieve their highest priority of increasing the volumes of the lagging physicians

And

  • Progress toward their goal of increased patient satisfaction because they have improved the early interactions between practice and patient.

Prioritization doesn’t mean you’re ignoring the other goals of your fertility business because it maximizes the effectiveness of your resource allocation.

We’ll discuss resource allocation shortly. Before we get to that part, though, all of the practice’s partners must be aligned on the priorities.

3. Aligning your partners with the goal (and each other)

Even when the managing partner of the fertility practice or the chief executive of another fertility company has final say, alignment with the partners is crucial.

The fact that partners need to achieve alignment doesn’t mean they don’t already have a healthy relationship, though it can. It simply means that they must be explicit and clear about an initiative so that everyone can come to a mutual agreement.

When everyone is on the same page, it’s much easier to work through any obstacles and questions that arise in the process of reaching a goal.

When it comes to aligning a practice’s partners, third-party support is often the most effective and efficient way to reach a consensus. This isn’t about moderating for conflicts, necessarily — it’s about

  • Prompting necessary conversations that are easily put off when everyone is focused on a new goal.

  • Bringing new ideas for partners to consider.

  • Acting as an objective sounding board in discussions between partners.

4. Resource allocation: Time or money?

The goal snowball means that the strategies required to meet different goals often overlap. It doesn’t mean they’re completely imbricated.

The amount of overlap will vary based on your available resources:

  • With more money, you can plan and execute multiple strategies concurrently over less time.

  • With more time, you can sequentially plan and execute more strategies for less money.

The goal snowball allows for a progressive return on investment. That means you can continue to invest in your fertility business without decreasing your income.

How will you set goals for your REI practice or fertility business?

Before investing time and money on a plan to achieve a goal (not to mention the execution), slow down so you can speed up:

  1. Quantify opportunities

  2. Prioritize them

  3. Align the partners

  4. Allocate your resources accordingly

If you would like outside expertise and experience, we can help. This four-part methodology is part of how Fertility Bridge helps fertility practices and other fertility companies navigate their biggest business challenges.

If you’re ready to set and accomplish goals for your IVF center or fertility company, sign up for the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic here.



119: The Catch 22 of Opening a New Fertility Clinic

In this episode of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin tackles the challenge of opening a brand new fertility center. Griffin explains the five  operational and five marketing phases you need to work through before opening up your new center. It is certainly not a perfectly linear process and will come with a different set of challenges, but going through these phases will save you time, money, and stress. If you are considering starting a new clinic or in the infancy stage of your fertility center now, this episode is for you.

In this episode you’ll learn:

-> 5 operational phases of launching a new center

-> 5 marketing phases of launching a new center

-> Understanding how to assess the risk vs. investment of starting a center

-> Whether or not launching a new center is right for you

If you would like to learn more about these phases after listening to the episode, check out our blog post, where we go more into detail! https://www.fertilitybridge.com/inside-reproductive-health/the-catch-22-of-opening-a-brand-new-fertility-center-and-the-5-phases-to-escape-it


Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.


More On Engaged MD:

This overlay of the operational sequence in the marketing sequence is probably the perfect time to talk about our sponsor Engaged MD. Because if you're any fertility center, you want to have a competitive advantage in serving your patients better and improving work-life for your staff. But if you're starting a brand new fertility center, you really want them.


And Engaged MD  is one of the simplest investments that you can make with the biggest return for improving the patient experience and improving the workflow for your staff because Engaged MD allows you to have true informed consent and to have pre-treatment education through technological solutions through software.


This is one of the most innovative platforms in the field, in my opinion. The reason why I have that opinion is because I hear from practice owners so frequently how much they appreciate Engaged MD. And when I did that first sponsorship read people, emailed me to say it's so cool that you have Engaged MD as a sponsor.


We started using them six months. Yeah. We love them. You have a limited window with patients in order to make that impression in order to be able to serve them. And when they're a deer in headlights, when you have to do something that should be procedural or general, you lose that time and that opportunity to build rapport, to better educate them, to tailor, fit their experience.


So. It's the best standard of care for them and with Engaged MD, whether it's there, whether it's medication teaching, or injection teaching or any of the other pre-treatment education modules that they're going through through Engaged MD, they can do it at their pace. They can do it through a sequential model.


They can, they come in educated, they come in having true informed consent so you can tailor fit that experience to them. So if you are a brand new fertility center, in my opinion, you have to have Engaged MD when you launch. And if you're one of the few groups remaining that isn't using Engaged MD you're behind, this is one of the areas where you will see.


An improvement almost immediately. So go to engagemd.com/irh. You'll get 25% off of your implementation fee by mentioning that you heard them on Inside Reproductive Health, or that you heard it from Griffin Jones. Please do that because one, you'll get a couple bucks off. And it helps us to continue to grow the show and bring you more content.


And the immediate benefit is in using Engaged MD  go to engagedmd.com/irh.


THE CATCH-22 OF OPENING A BRAND NEW FERTILITY CENTER AND THE 5 PHASES TO ESCAPE IT

Staffing. Construction. Leases.

Successfully opening a new fertility center takes months of meticulous planning. Then you actually have to launch it into the marketplace. But when? And what if you can't?

In the last three years, Fertility Bridge has advised seven aspiring fertility centers prior to market launch. Only one of them opened on time.

The other six faced delays of three months to two years, and some decided against the idea altogether.

Owners of brand new fertility centers struggle with an inherent Catch-22 in the timing of their go-to-market strategies.

Invest in strategy, content creation, customer service systems, and advertising only to have your opening date pushed back indefinitely

OR, equally bad

Have only days or a few weeks to create everything you need for a full pipeline of new fertility patients.

The Catch 22 is a result of a concentration of risk and investment. I’ve separated the operational sequence of opening a fertility center from the sequence of launching it in the marketplace. To solve the Catch 22, we have to be able to distribute the risk and investment across the sequence at the correct corresponding phase.

The 5 Operational Phases of Opening a Fertility Center

The operational phases aren’t my area of expertise, but as far as I can tell, IVF centers face opening challenges in this operative sequence:

  1. Market selection
    Choosing the geographic market, funding sources, and partners.

  2. Lease or purchase

    Real estate sales fall through right before closing. Landlords don’t include something in the lease agreement that was important in the discussion. A physical or zoning limitation is revealed at the last minute.

  3. Construction

    Even when you lease space in a ready-to-go medical office building, it’s likely that you will need to remodel the plan for your IVF center. You were going to put your collection room on the other side of the lab? Turns out there’s a multi-split HVAC system that connects to the outdoor unit from there. Call the architect. Again.

  4. Staffing

    You’re likely not opening a new center without a few saved numbers in your phone. But how many of them are certain to be the Renee Zelweger to your Jerry MacGuire? Lab Director, Nursing Manager, Office Manager? Then you have to negotiate their salaries, start dates, hire their direct reports, write their operating procedures and train them.

  5. Compliance

    You need insurance (malpractice, liability, worker’s compensation), tax certificates, a payroll executor, an IT/communications provider, EMR, billing software, scheduling software, practice management software, compliance training (OSHA, HIPAA, CLIA, Stark). Each of these requirements comes with the possibility of delay.

I can’t offer much insight into the operational phases of opening a fertility center. I can sequence the Fertility Center Market Launch into five phases to reduce your risk and progress your investment in a successful business in the fertility field.

Below I've outlined the Five Phases of the Fertility Center Market Launch — a tactical approach designed to help you circumvent the Catch-22 of opening a brand new fertility center.

The 5 Phases of Fertility Center Market Launch

  1. VIABILITY

    If you create a successful fertility business, you will spend millions of dollars in expenditures, maybe even in your first year. Before you do, spend a fraction of that investment assessing the total investment requirements of your plan.  The viability assessments come before you make your final decision to start your venture, but before you create a go-to-market strategy or secure a location.  

    At the time of writing, Fertility Bridge helps with part of the marketing analysis for just $597. You'll also want to hire good operations, finance, and compliance consultants. I can recommend a few of them. In total, you should expect to invest a couple of thousand dollars to make an informed decision about moving forward with your venture or not.

    You paid handsomely for a worthwhile education in medicine; consultants are sometimes your highest yield education in business. You can't lose here. Either you move forward with a more educated foundation, or you abort the idea, and you've saved yourself a fortune in time and money by making your decision at the right time with the right information.

  2. POSITIONING  

    While you assess the viability of your practice, you have to consider the positioning of your vision before you commit to bringing it to life. It’s called positioning because it sets your brand, company culture, and growth goals. These are the first steps in establishing your brand identity, so if your positioning doesn’t excite you more than the anxiety deters you, do not start the company. Decide your positioning while assessing market viability. Do this before developing the rest of your brand, creating a marketing strategy, and buying or leasing a location.

    •Core Values
    •Main Focus
    • Ten Year Target
    • Three Year Picture


3. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING STRATEGY

Congrats! Your vision for your practice is viable in the marketplace. You are excited about the position it will occupy, and you’ve made a down payment on the facility. Now that you’ve reached the point of no return, it’s the right time to craft the marketing and business development strategy for your first 18 months in business. Your strategy includes your systems for the various points of the Four Phases of the Fertility Marketing Journey. You begin creating your strategy as soon as you start construction or remodeling. If done correctly, it should take about two months to craft your marketing and business development strategy.

  1. If opening is delayed, you don’t have to invest in deploying the strategy. That comes later.

    What if remodeling is minimal and there are no delays? What if you’re already compliant and you have a burgeoning payroll, and you need to start seeing new patients within weeks or even days in order to meet your financial obligations?  

    The third and fourth phase of the Market Launch is where the Catch-22 is most acute. Under increasing financial pressure, many practice owners fall behind. That's when they get into trouble.

    4. IMMEDIATE MINIMUM IMPLEMENTATION

    Here, we break up the concentration of risk and investment to reduce your risk and maximize your long-term return: do not rush the formation of your strategy. Implement the bare minimum in the meantime.

    It doesn’t matter if construction is delayed. These processes, content outlines, advertising strategies, and brand development aren’t just for acquiring new patients. They convert inquiries to consult, consult to treatment, and measure and improve patient satisfaction. They inform who you hire, for which outcomes they’re accountable, and how you train them.

    Remember, three months is a liar’s six months. The timelines that agencies, marketers, and freelancers estimate are often half or a third of how long it really takes. Sure, a monkey can get a website up in a week. The site you really want, with your developed brand and content that represent your points of view, probably takes six months.

    So why not just be honest about that and separate what you need at this very moment from what you need for the foundational health of your fertility center?

    Open your patient acquisition pipeline without sacrificing the planning of the long-term productivity of your fertility practice by covering these four bases:

  1. Initial brand assets (name, logo, colors)

  2. Home page

    Let them know your positioning statement, method for scheduling new visits, and that you can’t wait to show them your new brand and website later in the year

  3. Digital real estate

    URL, social media accounts, and local listings of your brand name. You’re just claiming the real estate here. The only content you have to create at this time is a similar message to your homepage and the documentation of your opening journey if you so choose

  4. Google listings for providers and practice

Implement the minimum after you put a down payment on a facility, while you work on your strategy, but before you start seeing new patients.

5. DEPLOYMENT OF STRATEGY

Time to start delivering care according to the standard you’ve envisioned! 

When fertility centers rush to the fifth phase of Market Launch, they sometimes make errors that take them years to fix. The most common of those errors is hiring full-time marketing personnel. Depending on your growth goals, you may indeed need marketers on your staff. You don’t need them right away. In the beginning, your needs are too varied for one person, and it isn’t cost-effective to build an in-house agency. The time needed to build a new patient pipeline is shorter than the learning curve for someone who’s never done it for a fertility center before.

You deploy the rest of your marketing and business development strategy only after you are ready to see and treat new patients. This is when you film the videos, write the content, produce the referring provider assets, roll out a Customer Relationship Management software (CRM), and hire marketing staff.



ESCAPE THE CATCH 22 OF LAUNCHING A BRAND NEW REI PRACTICE

New fertility practice owners might think that their marketing strategy must be 100% in place on day one — or worse yet, they rush to create one and miss the foundational advantage of setting up their practice the right way. 

Separate the operational phases of opening a new fertility center from the five phases of the go-to-market launch. Break up the concentration of risk and investment by distributing them across the sequence at the right phase.

If you’re thinking about launching a new practice, you might consider our introductory engagement which is only $597. If you would like Fertility Bridge’s help with assessing the viability of your fertility center’s market launch, and our framework for your opening sequence, start here with our Goal and Competitive Diagnostic.