There’s a challenge in finding the balance between keeping both your staff and patients happy. On this episode of Inside Reproductive Health, originally aired in 2020, Griffin gets Dr. Peter Klatsky’s take on managing everyone’s satisfaction while providing a new standard of care. Working with his partners at Spring Fertility in California, their goal is to provide their patients a level of service that isn’t seen anywhere else, all while keeping their employees happy and in for the long haul.
Learn more about Dr. Klatsky and Spring Fertility by visiting www.springfertility.com/
Read about the work done by Mama Rescue and support their vision by visiting www.mamarescue.org/
To get started on a marketing plan for your company, complete the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic at FertilityBridge.com.
Other episodes mentioned in Episode 54:
Transcript
Dr. Klatsky 00:04
I've learned that not every single patient is going to have to have perfect experience. And our commitment is when we have a patient who had an experience that didn't live up to our goals that we listen and react immediately and try to improve our system.
Griffin Jones 00:18
Here's another flashback episode for you tell me if you do, or if you don't like these flashback episodes, email me, text me, many of you thought that they're a good idea. I always hated them, watching them on sitcoms, as a kid couldn't stand when they did that. So you tell me, if you liked them, I think it's useful to go back and see the growth that some of these folks have done. And for those of you starting your career, growing your practice, calling on some of these practices, it can be useful to go back and listen, I had Dr. Peter Klasky, on in the winter of 2020. Anything big happened since then. And we talked about the growth of spring fertility. And at that time, there was a handful of practices that were on the up growing fast and new practices, I should say a lot of established practices were still growing. And many networks were forming to buy practices, there really only handful of groups starting at that time, kind of it made it may have not even had a brick and mortar that time. I don't remember, there was spring and there was bias. And and then you know, maybe a couple others in different senses. But if like these brand new practices that were moving real fast, then of course we know Vioxx was acquired by combat even know that kind body went on to raise a lot more money and make an acquisition, like viruses grow to a number of different marketplaces. Spring fertility also has grown quite a bit in that time and time. When I spoke with Dr. Klasky. There, he was just they were just in San Francisco in the Bay Area, at least. And I don't know how many providers a day at that time, but I think it was Dr. Klasky, Dr. Trim and a few others. Now they're 1314 physicians are 1314 rei physicians, and a number of advanced practice providers. They're in different marketplaces that include scheme self was practicing in the Bay Area at that time that was back in New York, that are in Canada now with an acquisition of Genesis Fertility Center in Vancouver. And so this has been tremendous growth. And and it's from one of these brands that was meant to be one of the new exciting practices, one of the new exciting ways of opening up a practice. So you decided is spring fertility, done it the way they said they were going to do I think model for others going forward? Are they a new contender they they now part of the establishment? Are others going to do what they do love to hear your thoughts about spring fertility student group based on this old episode with Dr. Klasky, from January of 2020. Enjoy. So I want to talk about what that means to the standard of care not seen anywhere. But I want to talk about what that vision for spring fertility is because there's a pretty common trajectory for a lot of people to either join up with an existing group or to maybe start their own, which is less common because it's harder to start one's own group. Now you've done it with a pretty impressive speed and starting to be scale. So what was it that made you want to do that in the first place? What was the void in the marketplace that you thought? This is what I could add to it?
Dr. Klatsky 03:46
Well, you know, I think it starts with seeing an opportunity to practice medicine the way I always dreamed. And I felt that it for a variety of reasons in this places that I was I wasn't able to practice the kind of medicine that I wanted to practice. I was fortunate enough to have a best friend from residency, who I went through fellowship with and that was Dr. Nam Tran. He was practicing at UCSF, I was practicing in Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And we both had wonderful academic medical careers. But when it came to the practice of seeing patients and the way in which we wanted to deliver care for a variety of reasons, we weren't able to practice the way we wanted to in a larger academic center. We then also noted that most of the major innovations in our field had come from the private sector. And so they had come from people came before us who we were fortunate enough to follow people like Bill Schoolcraft and CCRM, where he worked with one of our partners. Now Dr. Devin haras, who's brilliant and amazing people like Richard Scott who really really innovated people like on at Cobo and our colleagues over in Spain and So nominate woke up. And we said, Gosh, the really big game changing innovations in our field seem to have come not through NIH funding, which is near to absent in our field, or at least in the IVF component of our field. But we're coming from from the terrific world class private Fertility Centers that invested their own money and time to research and develop. So there was a combination of one, we could leave academic medicine, and still do provide the cutting edge care and actually provide it in an even more cutting edge and even more rapid way we could control the kind of research that we wanted to, and try to push the field forward one and then two, from a patient experience standpoint, there were so many areas where we felt like we wouldn't have been, we were not able to serve patients the way we would have wanted to be cared for if we were the patient. And so we may add to that, that I'm having this conversation with my best friend, who we happen to be on different sides of the country. But we blue sky, what would it be like if we had our own practice, we could do it the way we wanted to do it? And what would that vision look like? And then we were fortunate enough to have two other close friends who happened to be the best embryologist on the West Coast, who also shared our vision. And they wanted to push the field forward. And, you know, in their words, they felt like they were what they were wonderful institutions, but felt that if they had stayed there, they wouldn't, they wouldn't be practicing the same way 10 years from now that they were at that time. And so the four of us came together and sort of had this idea that, what would it look like if we were starting from scratch? From the patient experience from the patient care? And what would it look like in the lab, if we could take the best technology available? And then imagine what technology might bring us over the next 10 or 15 years? And how would we design and build a lab. And then after about a year to a year and a half of planning and thoughtful analysis, we then decided to take this job.
Griffin Jones 07:06
So I want to come back to that question of the lab and springs perspective on the lab. But I want to explore this idea of why you felt you couldn't pursue the way you wanted to practice medicine or build your own infrastructure in the Academy because I've only talked about the academic side of our field really once on the show with Dr. Petro Borgia Leto, and I'm having a few more guests on to talk about it in 2020, because I realized that it's a void that we really haven't covered. I've done a little bit of business with academic centers, and the very smallest consulting engagements are like a bureaucratic nightmare to go through the red tape. So I can infer why you might not have been able to realize the practice of medicine that you would want to realize in the academy. But describe why you had to take your vision out of it. And it's probably beyond NIH funding, I'm guessing.
Dr. Klatsky 08:08
Yeah, I think one of the draws to an academic centers to do amazing research, and to do amazing teaching. And the thing that you still can do in a one in a great academic institution is provide terrific teaching. And you can teach residents, medical students fellows, and that is incredibly rewarding. In a private sector practice, you can also continue to teach, we have residents come to spring fertility from an endocrinology group, we have new physicians who are when you join spring fertility you before you see a patient, you probably spend another two to three months just training with us learning our protocols and our perspectives on how to deliver care in so we haven't lost that that teaching angle from public funding the NIH, whether it's the NIH or somebody else, there's just not a lot of research dollars into the really exciting stuff that we do when it involves human embryos. And too, it's not a high priority for the NIH. From a bureaucratic standpoint, I share some of your frustrations I one point had over a quarter million dollars of funding from the World Bank to do maternal mortality research in Uganda. And that was matched by several other private foundations. And being able to deploy funds that we already got, you had to go through multiple layers. And so you can imagine what it's like as a vendor trying to, you know, work with your services. But But even more than that, from a patient that to get what it means to be a provider, occasionally to have a patient who wanted to be seen earlier so she could get to work and you knew she had a very stressful job. And it was important for her to be seen and out of the office by 730. So Nam or myself, we're pretty committed to our patients. We're not pretty but we're very committed to our patients. And we're willing to come in at 7am but in you know, essentially that you don't have control over the resources. There might not be a nurse or a medical assistant to help you do it all For Sale, and therefore you can't do that. So I've noticed you'd say, well, I, I'd like to come in and see this patient this time. No, that's not available, we don't have the staffing for that. And so when you have control over the system setup, you can set up so that something that would be incredibly popular, like earlier monitoring hours is a viable option for your patients.
Griffin Jones 10:22
Yeah, it seems to point out, the nuance between where the standard of care begins in the form of whether it's best business practices or simply is now the standard of care. To me, it's not immediately obvious. It's something I talk a lot about on the show, but you're talking about being able to accommodate patients in a way that works for them. That might be best business practices, and therefore, is favored by the private sector. But at what point? Is it just the standard of care?
Dr. Klatsky 10:57
Yeah, I don't like to think in terms of best business practices, but I like to think in terms of what's best for my patient. And well,
Griffin Jones 11:04
that's what I mean, Peter, I think we divorced those two concepts. And but Customer Service at one point is patient service.
Dr. Klatsky 11:13
Yeah. 100%. And so, you know, that's where you we, and all it really takes us is looking at, what would I want if I was a patient? Right? And then it takes a little more effort to figure out how would I change my system, for example, we have two shifts of nurses. Why do we have two sets of nurses because that's the only way we can have patients come in early. And also get results to patients in the afternoon. But that, but that's not the way most larger institutions are set up. And that's also not the way an institution, even private sector institutions are set up. Because if you if you were the only Fertility Center in New York City in 1992, you didn't have to worry about what patients wanted, right? You had 612, month, waitlist, whatever you did, and you could make the patient's jump through whatever hoops were necessary. And, and they could go through that bureaucratic maze, and the doctor could get there, you know, have the best parking spot in the lot and then show up at the time that was convenient for the clinic or for the provider, and patients would wait. And what we're seeing today, you know, is that patients do demand more and a place like spring fertility that actually thinks what would I wanted I was the patient is going to continue to grow and have incredibly positive patient experiences, if other centers aren't going to do the same thing,
Griffin Jones 12:32
which really makes me wonder how someone can worry about what the patient wants, while also serving the patients. So we've had others on the show and have talked about the CEO role. And a lot of companies now have a chief executive officer who is in charge of the C suite, and they manage all of the business. And mostly the physicians are often their advisors, but it's effectively the employees of the company. There's a few folks like yourself who are physician led groups who are in the entrepreneurial seat and in the physician seat, so you didn't have to worry or a physician didn't have to worry about what patients wanted in 1992, you Peter Klasky, very much do. And you also have a patient caseload, you have to do retrievals you're still an REI, within the practice group, as well as being an entrepreneur that leads the vision and the scale and the future value of the group. How are you able to do both things at the same time? Because I'm just running a client services firm. And it ain't frickin easy. How do you manage it?
Dr. Klatsky 13:49
Not alone. And so I focused during the day from 7am until 6pm, I focused entirely on my patients. And when I'm focusing on my patients that's going to inform what spring fertility should do from an operational perspective. I'm lucky that I don't it no part of spring has been Peter Cloudscape. Alone at all. I have the best partner in the world. Dr. Nam Tran, who is the smartest person I know. And in addition to being the smartest scientist in position, I know you he's also the best operational leader that one can have. And we were very fortunate early on to hire really terrific people. So I we have a chief operating officer who is excellent at taking our vision. And in managing the day to day operations. We just hired an amazing woman who is running our VP of operations. And she came from, from the Vita which is a large healthcare organization where she takes a lot of the structure and organizational stuff. And so you know, between Derald and Marin, and then we've got an array of additional folks who we have both given direction to and who who we trust to carry out that direction and trust to check in with us. So we have weekly check in meetings. And when Nam and I are seeing patients, we're getting feedback so that we know how to adjust operations, right? When we when I'm seeing patient nice to hear somebody's frustrated about something, we respond not, you know, in a month or in two months, we respond that day. And our team is all motivated. So the other important important thing is to make sure you have a happy team, and that you empower those people. So we were so fortunate to hire Dr. Devin unharnessed, who is now the CO medical director of spring fertility, and overseas medical operations and process on par alongside of Dr. Trump non track. And so the way we do it is not the way your question was sort of, Peter, how do you do it? I don't, you know, we have an amazing team that together functions really well. And we complement each other. And what we share also is a vision for how to be everybody join spring wants to deliver the best service for their patients. And we define services in equal parts, patient experience, and clinical outcomes. And, and everybody knows that that second best isn't good enough. And so we're united by a desire to deliver the best experience for our patients, the best care for our patients, and a desire to be the best at that. And then we hire wonderful people. We hire people who are effective operationally, but also fun to hang out with. And so we have a great time hanging out tonight, I'm going out to dinner with all of the providers and we've got a dinner for eight with some of our key management people and the providers. And it's going to be our end of year last physician meeting, we have a physician meeting every month, everybody has an equal weight, everybody has an equal say. And we take feedback, whether it's from our patients, or our teammates, or their physicians incredibly seriously, if you joined spring, and now we're seven positions, if you join spring, and you have a suggestion for something you think we can do better, we want to hear, right, we don't want somebody else to come up with that idea. And and we want to make sure that we hire the best Doc's and that we keep those Doc's in New, and then we, we make sure they're happy. And in California, there's no non compete either, right? So so it is all about making sure your team is empowered, you have the right people, and everybody communicates well. And so a lot, also a lot of hard work, right? late hours, but I think the thing that's you allowed spring to, to effectively scales thus far, has been a team of people who will complement each other.
Griffin Jones 17:42
It started with two, how does your skill set and Dr. Trim skill set? Where do they overlap? And where do they diverge?
Dr. Klatsky 17:53
You know, usually, this is where I would make a joke and say that I'm better looking and more charming. And he he's good at managing the plantings around our office and some of the wires that sometimes get tangled. But all kidding aside, there's a total joke, I think that nom is these isn't has always has been the smartest guy in our field for for as long as I've known him. And he's just one of the smartest people I've ever met. And I and I'm comfortable enough to recognize that and confident, are smart enough to recognize that and confident enough to let him run most operational practices and not feel threatened by him saying, Hey, I think we should do it this way. When I've been doing it a different way. I think that there are areas where I have strengths that may be complement areas where he's not quite as strong. And both of us if we had to, or you're over everything, or if we had ego around who would get to do this or who would lead that it would just slow us down and get in our way. And it would affect our relationship. We really also liked each other. So even though we're quite different, and but because we like each other, it creates an environment where the nurses like working with us because we're because we're going to be having more fun, we're going to probably be making fun of each other. And we're going to be supporting each other. And we're never going to worry about who took more calls or who had a little bit more work on one thing or another. We're both trying to make sure we're not holding the other person back. And then when you have that environment, and you bring in somebody like dedmon, Horace Uzziah Harris, these are are incredibly brilliant physicians who are also committed to that same vision, give patients the best clinical experience possible. And, and one of the most amazing things that I've experienced and then on the lab side, we're led but by just to an amazing team of embryologist. And you know, in as to married embryologist, who we started with Sergio Bukhari, he's to monitor Porsche. And they just delivered the best not only the best quality work, and constantly trying to push the envelope for innovation and to improve outcomes. But they also create an environment in the lab, that is a wonderful place to work. So we're able to attract and retain top embryology talent. But But I think, if I were to shorten it, and try to make it more concise, NOM manages detailed operating protocols. And I probably manage some of the vision voice. And I'm very attentive to the patient experience.
Griffin Jones 20:42
When you're growing up fertility practice fast, you need the best that there is. And the best that there is that I'm hearing from half of the Fertility Centers on this continent is engaged in the with regard to the informed consent, the pre treatment, education, and the workflow assistance that engaged in the software provides engaged MD is over and over again, something I hear from clients and from you all, at SRM and a meetings about how useful it's been for staff how useful it's been improving patient satisfaction, because the patient gets to go through the modules on their time that makes their care with you their time with you personalized, and you'd have a much more defensible informed consent. As you can see, people were watching these modules, they have the time to do it, they agree that these different phases, and you don't have to track down all this paperwork, all the time that you save your staff, how you make them more efficient, and improve the satisfaction of the patient. That's part of the standard of care, the patient has to go through paperwork, if they have to do all the education themselves, they're a deer in their headlights, they're a deer in headlights in their interactions with you is that the highest standard of care, engage them the input improves these things. And you can get on board with engaging in the you're among now the minority that are not going to engage md.com/griffin to get a free workflow assessment, assessment from engaged and V. Team. And you'll also help to create more inside reproductive health content, because you let a sponsor know that this is one of the places that you've heard them. I heard from the show you heard that from me. But it's an advantage to your team. And it's most necessary if you're going fast. It's a competitive advantage engaged in the.com/griffin. Now back to this conversation to Dr. Peter Klasky. Spring is often known for its vision for the lab, it's its functional outlay of the lab and looking at the lab very differently from how IVF labs have been structured in the past. When people say that, what are they referring to?
Dr. Klatsky 23:04
Well, there's a lot of things we do uniquely in the lab. But we the flow in our lab is extremely efficient, and designed to prevent minimal movements and to minimize any risks to embryos or eggs. With regard to egg and embryo storage. There's everything has not just redundancy, but two layers of redundancy. There are some things we do very uniquely in our lab. We are the only I believe we are the only practice in the country that injects in those ACCION eggs in a hypoxic environment. That's the same ambient air quality that exists in the incubators. We are the only lab in the country that does the same thing from egg retrieval. So when the eggs are being retrieved from somebody's body, they immediately go into an isolette while the embryologist is looking at them, where the carbon dioxide level is 5% and the oxygen levels 5%. So that's matching what it is in the fallopian tubes. I don't believe I don't know of any center that's doing that currently. And to be honest, we weren't able to do that when we built the lab because the technology didn't exist to lower the oxygen to displace oxygen in a nice sight. And within two years of opening, we were able to do that. But we built the infrastructure in our lab that can do that. So we have nitrogen gas and co2 Gas throughout our lab. And we have other infrastructure that's anticipating what technology will bring five years from now. That is amazing innovation that we you know, I credit 100% to Dr. Trump, and his vision for what the lab, the IVF lab will look like in 2025.
Griffin Jones 24:41
I think innovation like that, which is groundbreaking in some ways and other things that other people are doing and it harkens back to something that TJ Farnsworth had said on the show a few weeks ago and I actually really agree with that I've thought about both before and even more since I want to see if Few agree. First off, if you if you don't why, and if you do, what do you think can be done about it, but his sentiment was coming from the oncology field was that there? There is less peer to peer sharing of best operations practices of best practices, both from a business and clinical setting. And I really do see that, Peter, I really see it from independent owners, especially I think everybody feels like they've got the secret sauce. And maybe you're a guy that really does have the secret sauce. And you think Well, I do. And I don't want to share with folks that are doing the same. First, do you see it that way? Do you see that our field isn't nearly as collaborative as it could be? Why or why not?
Dr. Klatsky 25:45
I don't, you know, I think we I don't see it that way. And I'm sad that TJ doesn't feel that way. It feels that way. I actually think that there. I started this off by saying, we followed great minds and great practices that shared their advances in our field. And he, I don't think oncology even moves as quickly as the field of fertility does and oncology moves incredibly quickly. But why do we have egg freezing because of a commitment of somebody in Japan, carried forth with clinical trials performed in Spain. And those publications came out in 2010. And by 2012, egg freezing was no longer considered experimental in Europe or the US. And it was, and people were traveling to other places to learn how to do that. I think that Richard Scott and Bill Schoolcraft, shared advances in pre Implantation Genetic testing with the field. So I don't know that there's been a lack of peer to peer sharing, even when even when people have secrets. When we opened up the lab, we had Barry bear, who's whose lab director for Stanford, which is maybe 40 miles away, walk through our lab, and tour it with us and in the professionals in our, in our field, I expect that they do share. So I know the embryologist are constantly sharing with each other what they're doing, because they have long standing relationships. It's kind of like when Nam was at UCSF and I was at Einstein, we'd always talked about what each other was doing. So and, you know, all of us had peers and colleagues and other centers of so I've not seen that that much. I do think people are tied to their practices, I think maybe some of the border docks, and we're pretty young group, but maybe some of the older dots don't want to change the way they're doing it. And that's what he's referring to. And so they say, Oh, this is really special. Because this way, I've always done it. But I think most innovations have been pretty. It's hard to keep secrets in our field, you know, trade secrets, because our trade secrets are information and knowledge. For example, what I just shared with you on your podcast, everybody I know nobody else is doing hypoxic xe made me you know, but I'm not. I haven't been shy about that, since we've opened that, you know, and maybe people will start doing it, people have to buy into something and believe that there's a benefit to it. But I don't think people are really secretive.
Griffin Jones 28:08
I see both sides, I definitely see enough examples of both. And perhaps you're right, that there is an age difference. I think there's probably a practice structure difference. The people that I see sharing are the people that you mentioned, plus yourself plus TJ, the people that are growing groups pretty quickly, and adding a lot of new things tend to share. And then there are probably another class of folks that they want to hold on to their piece of their particular market. And I often find those folks are reluctant to talk to the folks across the street or have nice things to say about the folks across the street are reluctant to meet with them or join some of the broader groups. And so
Dr. Klatsky 28:57
we all just do. And that's where so if they're acting that way, that's what's silly. Like, they may not be but you but you're embryologist are when you're nurses aren't as RM they're sharing. Your your junior Doc's who both went through fellowship together are sharing with each other. So that's where we try not to be, you know, we try to have good collegial relationships with everybody. And, and, and we always want it and the great thing about our field is it doesn't stand still. So what is amazingly cutting edge today in five years, four years, maybe standard of care, and you'll have to continually move the needle. And that's really to really really keep growing, you're gonna have to attract and keep the best people who all have that future in mind, you know, want to move the field forward. So we have better patient outcomes, so we can provide a better patient experience and I guess that part you need to really give voice to your your new hires. So that doc who is straight out of fellowship Hey, you know Meet me. Maybe that's the person who's going to be Richard Scott or Bill Schoolcraft, you know, in 20 years. So listen to the suggestions that they have. And that opportunity.
Griffin Jones 30:12
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question is does it become binary for Talent Recruitment and how you're able to build your group because I belong to a few different masterminds of owners of other creative firms. And our fertility marketing blueprint took us years to build the way it is a really good strategy piece and allows us to make sure that almost any group is going to be successful if it's if it's done right. And took us years to do, and I willingly share it with other agency owners. And I just tell them, if you decide that you're now going to go into fertility field with this, you'll burn in business development, hell, but other than that, I'm not making people sign an NDA, I'm not, I'm just sharing it with other peers. And so that they can use it to help
Dr. Klatsky 31:08
like you, Griffin, and in your your, your becoming a thought leader in our field. So people are gonna want to always have your, your thoughts and opinion and I think that makes sense.
Griffin Jones 31:20
Well, to your point, though, I can't keep secret sauce anyway, there is no secret sauce. The embryologist are talking to each other, the nurses are talking to each other, the Jr. Doc's are they're talking with their pharma reps who come in who are talking with other folks. And so it's either you're either offense of this is what we're doing. And I'm doing a podcast episode every single week, and Peter is sharing his version of xe on the podcast with everyone and sharing that and bringing that to the field on offense, or on your or your you're on defense. And I'm starting to see the folks that are struggling with that. But to me, it's binary, there is no maintaining the secret sauce, you've talked about how you are building a team based on that ethos, how else are you building the team to be collaborative, like what's the structure of springs team that makes sure that it's one of as you say, advancing the core value of what's in the best interests of the patient, we
Dr. Klatsky 32:21
onboard people slowly providers, you know, most places, you're seeing patients a week out, provider out of fellowship will probably take a minimum of two months before they're seeing their first new patient. And more likely closer to four, we maintain regular full team meetings where we talk about clinical issues and also practice issues. And what we have built in, I guess, modeled from the top down is a relatively flat system or flat operating system. So that medical assistant, you may have just heard somebody knock on my door, nobody feels timid about knocking on anybody's door, it's spring fertility, and if a physician is running five minutes late, that means a patient's been waiting for too long. And so everybody's instructed to let that patient that physician know and empowered to do so. So we've actually a small waiting room has been virtually every year in San Francisco combined. And people are usually surprised because these patients don't wait here. And that's because you know, the physician would be in trouble, regardless of who the physician is, if the patient's waiting for them. And that's, you know, a core value is that the patients come first. And everybody gets a copy of our mission statement. Everybody knows what our pillars are. And everybody is oriented for two days, every single hire, whether you're in the finance area, or whether you're in a clinical operations area, to understand what that mission is, and we try to hire Well, we try to screen for people who are interested in that mission before we bring people on.
Griffin Jones 33:55
Yeah, other thing when I say binarias offense and defense, it's really Who do you want to work with and for? And who do you not want to work with and for and in order to attract people who are self motivated. The values and the reinforcement of the values, the reiteration of them, I think, is critical. And I think in that group of clinics that were founded in, let's say, the mid into late 1990s, many of those don't have them. And I think part of the reason why some of them are starting to struggle now is because they're not built in this way, which is not only just built for talent shouldn't be built for patients but also built to attract talent. So where do you see this going in the next decade, let's say in terms of I guess what you want to do with spring but where you see the field, really starting to bear to some of the demands that have been eking the past couple years,
Dr. Klatsky 35:05
I think the field is growing expansively they massively. And so I think I think that it will continue to be growth in our field, driven by demand for IVF services as women continue to have their first child and start families later on in life, but also with the advent of egg freezing. And as people get more comfortable with that technologies, we have more data on the on the viability of that technology, I think people will demand more and our patients are are more demanding. And they're used to having an individualized and personal experience. And so the centers that are able to provide that enable to provide a patient experience will grow in those that want to continue putting the doctor first as opposed to the patient will see you know, probably see a retraction in their market share and clinics like ours, where people like working together. I said last night, we went out to dinner with a candidate, a new physician recruitment candidate, and she was lovely, and the team was just happy to be out together for dinner. And mentioned tonight, we're having another dinner with all the physician and providers, and then we're having a party for our entire staff and their partners on Friday night or holiday party. And so sprint like spring is a fun place to work. We every quarter, we do something as a team and not, you know, they're usually not boring. And, and sometimes, they're arguably too fun. But we really try to make sure everybody in the in the organization feels valued, and that people enjoy being around each other. And so if you can do, and I think that's a critical element to the patient experience, it is almost impossible to deliver a wonderful patient experience. If your team does not like working together. In order to make patients happy, you have to start by making your staff ensure that vision that we're all what we're doing is important, and it's about the patient.
Griffin Jones 36:57
The old adage had been shareholders first customers second, employees. Third, I think many forward thinkers have corrected in our field, you could say its employees first patient second, in that case, the for the for the exact reason that you described
Dr. Klatsky 37:16
would be very, I don't want to say that because I still think the patients come first. But but almost like in order, you have
Griffin Jones 37:22
to say that because you're a doctor, if you were if you were just a business owner, not a physician, you wouldn't have to say that because I'll say it right now in front of everybody, clients come second, if any of my clients are listening, and most of them do, they know, my employees come first. And if I felt like my employees, were not someone that put the client's interests at the top of their mind, and we're willing to go the extra mile, they wouldn't be on my team to begin with. But if it ever came down to, you know, if client ever dog cost an employee, I would rip them apart in front of the whole team just to boost morale.
Dr. Klatsky 37:59
Yeah, wouldn't rip apart a patient. We're very sensitive with our patient, but but you can have both. Let's agree you can both they're both critically important. Your mission is about your patients. But you can't fulfill that mission. If you're if your staffs unhappy or feels like you're in any way not doing right. But
Griffin Jones 38:17
I just don't think that point can be understated that when employees when team members are happy, they take really good care of the people that they're supposed to be taking care of. And that's true in medicine, as well as client services I wasn't going to ask you about this wasn't on my list. But I do want to talk about your endeavors for social good particularly in Uganda. One of the reasons why I started my own company is because I want to be a philanthropist. But for me, they're very much separate I guess that my business is what I do to make money so that I can give money to the organizations that I care about. We're not like TOMS Shoes where we're selling a pair of shoes and then another pair it goes to the individual in need for you are your endeavors for social good, very much infused with spring or is spring a business venture that helps you to contribute in the ways that you want to.
Dr. Klatsky 39:14
I think it's all in so so first spring is about providing really excellent care to people on a really important level. So if you're an infertility patient been trying for the last 12 months to get pregnant, and every period feels like a wound in a stabbing, you know, insult and pain and injury, then providing sensitive, compassionate fertility care, you know, is a social good in its own right, helping somebody preserve their future fertility and their options and empowering them to go on their next date and not feel stressed. Like it has to be the guy they're going to marry. You know, for somebody who's going to freeze eggs is a social good so I feel like I'm so fortunate that the business or profession that I'm in just doing my job is a social good No, no, I'm passionate also about just reproductive health globally and in reducing disparities in care. And so the mama rescue program that I started in Uganda was really successful. And we were funded by the World Bank by UNICEF. And I basically had a decision to make whether I was going to get out of the fertility space, and go full time into the nonprofit space, or go all into the fertility space. And I chose the ladder in the way we sort of marry those two things right now is it spring fertility is actually making a donation sort of like TOMS Shoes. And so we make a donation for every person, we get pregnant. To spring fertility last month, we authorized the $24,000 payment to the organization's running mama rescue. And that will provide for every pregnancy, we have, we provide for two women in rural Africa to get an emergency transport in the event of an obstetric emergency, and to transport 10 women to a health center for skilled obstetric care. And so and we do that, with every pregnancy achieved at Spring. And so so that's where we get to marry, you know, helping women who can afford advanced reproductive technologies have gradually built up care in the United States, with women who are no less deserving in an environment in an area with far fewer resources, and try to connect those two worlds through our shared humanity. And that's something that's been important since we started in, I mentioned that, that Nam Tran is the smartest person I know, you know, he came to United States as a refugee. Like, my God, like if Donald Trump was President, you know, 40 years ago, we might not have had the benefit of having somebody like him in our country. And so we still believe in that shared humanity and that shared reproductive health, and I sort of pivoted off on the politics, but I like to, but we're real infertility is real. And in frankly, like, I'm disgusted with our current administration, and as a CEO of a company, or as a founder of a company, I probably shouldn't say that. But I don't care. Because it's reproductive health, right. And that's what we're passionate about. And so we're passionate about helping improve the lives of women, both in our own community. And if we can tie those eyes to women who are deserving and caring and, and underserved. We want to and so that's what we do with every pregnancy we we actually support access to skilled obstetric and antenatal care in in western and central Uganda.
Griffin Jones 42:36
How do you want to conclude with our audience of how spring fertility is going to build this new standard of care that's not seen anywhere.
Dr. Klatsky 42:46
I hope that we continue to have great feedback from our patients. I've learned that not every single patient is going to have to have perfect experience. But our commitment is when we have a patient who had an experience that didn't live up to our goals that we listen and react immediately and try to improve our system right now. I think we deliver amazing care. And I hope that we can continue to hear the kind of feedback from patients that they have pregnancies quicker, that the experience is less uncomfortable and more empowering. And if we can continue to do that, and continue to empower our patients provide a more comfortable, compassionate and efficient experience. Those are words that don't always go together. It spring will continue to grow. It will continue to grow in the Bay Area. And as well as new geographies. And anybody who's interested in that mission should give me a call or send me an email because we are hiring
Griffin Jones 43:48
new geographies, watch out folks that are coming to your town. Dr. Peter Klasky. Thank you very much for coming on inside reproductive.
43:56
Thank you. You've been listening to the inside reproductive health podcast with Griffin Jones. If you're ready to take action to make sure that your practice thrives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society, visit fertility bridge.com To begin the first piece of the fertility marketing system, the goal and competitive diagnostic. Thank you for listening to inside reproductive health