Inside Reproductive Health, Ep 24

Defined Expectations: Are They Key to a 5-Star Experience for REI Patients? An Interview with Lisa Duran

In this episode, host Griffin Jones chats with Lisa Duran, the Chief Experience Officer for the Inception Fertility Network. Duran’s extensive experience in team-focused patient experience programs has led her to help clinics implement programs that impact the way patients and staff alike respond to the clinic. Jones and Duran discuss the changes in the field and how clinics can differentiate by creating a truly customized experience for patients.

Mentioned during the podcast:

The Effortless Experience

If Disney Ran Your Hospital

Griffin Jones: Today on the show, I’m joined by Lisa Duran. Lisa is an old friend of mine and the Chief Experience Officer for the Inception Fertility Network. You might know Lisa from her team-focused patient experience programs. She has 15 years of training and development, 7 years specializing in women’s health and infertility. She has been the CEO of Reconceived, patient experiencing consulting, has worked for the DiJulius Group as a Customer Experience Consultant, and has been the Director of Business Development for RMA of Texas, among other things. You’ve probably seen her speak at ASRM, at MRS, at a number of different meetings, including the Association for Reproductive Managers, of which she was the chair. And a fun fact that I didn’t know about Lisa, was that she was a professional skater in the Ice Capades. You learn something new about someone that you have known for years when you have them on the podcast. Lisa, welcome to Inside Reproductive Health.

Lisa Duran: Oh, thank you Griffin. I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

GJ: You got into this role of patient experience partly because it was your prior background, but it came from initially being director of marketing, director of business development for a fertility center, so does that mean that patient experience is necessary to patient acquisition? You mean I just can’t run ads and then patients will come forever?

LD: *laughs* For sure. Well, there’s no doubt that patient experience is a differentiator. And actually, I’d love to tell you the story of how the patient experience consulting began. It’s actually a really great story. So I was consulting for Dr. Arredondo of RMA of Texas in business development, marketing, just all kinds of things-- whatever he needed. He was very-- of course, those of you who know Dr. Arredondo know that patient experience is his passion. And he really wanted to understand, he wanted his practice to be based around— the foundation of it —to be based around patient experience. So he said let’s hire the best to come in, let’s hire the Ritz-Carlton to come in and talk to us about patient experience, and how important it is, and some things that we can grab onto to create that great experience. So he hired the Ritz-Carlton, and we all know that they’re fabulous! And so a gentleman came in for four hours to talk about the guest experience at the Ritz-Carlton. And it was a great talk, although our team walked away going, gosh, everyone wants to be at the Ritz-Carlton, but nobody wants to be at a fertility clinic, right? I mean, nobody dreams of being… and so it was difficult to find relevancy in some of the teaching, so I reminded Dr. Arredondo that my background was in training and development, so I was like, let’s create something relevant to us, y’know, to that person at the front desk, that concierge, that when a patient is checking in and the phone is ringing, and someone, at the time before EMR, someone is handing them a chart-- just that multitasking, and you know, you have a patient in front of you who’s crying, you know, because they had a negative pregnancy test. And the next patient that comes up in front of you is celebrating that positive pregnancy test. How do we navigate that? How do we handle the constant switching of hats and the multi-tasking in our space? And that’s how Reconceived was born, and it was born-- actually, I didn’t create the program, it was really the clinic. All together we did. And so that’s how it started, and so we recognized pretty early on that that had to have been--that has to be our differentiator, and that has to be relevant to our day in and day out, it can’t be, y’know, the fluffy stuff. It really has to be the, Okay, how do we handle these situations? How do we deliver something that’s difficult? How do we deliver a difficult message? And then how do we turn around and celebrate that and respecting the other patient? And so, it’s been quite the journey, and quite a learning process. I’ve learned so much from all the clinics that I used to go to and the group of clinics I’m in now. And so, yes, the patient experience is not only necessary, it’s the cornerstone of what we do. You know, we were created for a relationship. We were created to desire experience, to experience something, to feel. And patient experience is the cornerstone of that.

GJ: Can you talk a little bit about what that means? I think a lot of people think that means aesthetics, or… sometimes it might, but I remember one talk you gave. You were talking about high ceilings and yoga. And, as just sort of, like, the customer experience for almost anything nowadays, right? You were talking about the experience, I think, of getting your nails done, and someone who had really attended you with great service because he knew you were in a rush, and it wasn’t a fancy place or anything, it was just that he was, like, really all about making sure that you got the service that you needed. And you talked a little bit about, we need to get away from the idea of high ceilings and yoga. Can you talk a little bit about that?

LD: Sure, absolutely, and I love that story, because it’s so real to me. This is-- I’m gonna quote Dr. Arredondo and one of the things that he says all the time, that satisfaction equals performance minus expectation. So we find ourselves performing when we talk about the definition of patient experience or guest experience or customer experience, people think it’s saying please and thank you. And there’s so many more spokes to that wheel, and it’s really understanding what the patient is expecting and then delivering on that. And I use the story of getting my nails done, and many women go as a luxury, as a pampering session, they go maybe for the glass of wine, and the massage chair, and so I was not loyal to one nail clinic, because I would go into a salon, I would go into all the different nail salons, and I wasn’t loyal, just whoever could take me, because they didn’t understand what my expectations were. And what satisfied me is very different. So I talked to the owner of the salon, and he says to me, why don’t I see you there all the time? He says, we’ve got the high ceilings— isn’t that nice? We’ve got the massage chairs— isn’t that nice? And I said, y’know, those are wonderful, but those are not important to me. And he said, But I’ve got the wine, and I said, that’s not important to me. And he says, y’know, well, we have solar, and we have this and that, and I said those things are not important to me— you haven’t asked me what’s important to me. And when he said, What? I said, I wanna get in and out of there as fast as I can. So I want your fastest, best person. But you’ve never asked me, and I’ve never found theuestion is a big one… defining patient experience, there are many spokes to the wheel, but there are three things that I believe are equally important when we’re talking about patient experience. And the first one is going to be making it effortless. There’s a great book called The Effortless Experience, that talks about people won’t necessarily be loyal because they’ve had a great experience. Because in today’s economy, and in our fast-paced world, what’s important to us is making things effortless as well as making a great experience. So if we can be efficient and make things effortless and create an experience that doesn’t require a lot of work on the patient’s end, that is beautiful. So it’s looking at processes. That’s one of the big spokes to that wheel. Number two is making it fun and enjoyable and a sense of purpose for the team. We can teach the team the how-to, but if they don’t have the heart to, the how-to goes away. And it’s a very short window-- it’s a band-aid, it doesn’t sustain. So the efficiency is making it effortless, it’s making the team feel a sense of purpose and love what they do, and then, of course, it’s the delivery and understanding the expectations of the patients. So we can perform to their expectations and not just assume and perform for what we think they expect.

GJ: This has to start from the top, and I see...I can see training a practice or practice group on some of the tactics of how to… for the delivery part. And, now, ostensibly teaching them how to meet expectations. But at the end of the day, if someone is in charge that does not have this in their priorities list, or even worse, their behavior is toxic to it, or there’s a nurse manager or practice manager that is… not happy about something new or wants to do things the way they’ve always done it or doesn’t have their heart, focus, mind in this, et cetera, I can see this imploding.

LD: Yeah. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And I have to tell you, that was one of my biggest challenges in consulting, when I was consulting, I would have practices ask me to come in and do a workshop, and I would always tell them that a patient experience program or a patient experience culture, you don’t create that with a workshop. And the willingness to invest in a culture changing program is very hard to come by. And there’s a lot of people who believe that it’s the right thing. And there’s a lot of people who will agree with you that, yes, patient experience is the cornerstone, it’s the differentiator, but their willingness to invest in the tools and in training their supervisors, anyone in a supervisory role, to coach and to hold accountable, they’re very far and few between. I’ve gone to some amazing practices who had great intentions, who just didn’t quite understand or necessarily wasn’t the right investment for them at the time, I’m not quite sure. But the coaching and the redirecting are the most important pieces in a program like this, or a culture-changing program like this, in bearing fruit. And we can teach the how-to, we can even… even… sweetly break their hearts for the heart to, but if there’s nobody paying attention to it, then… y’know, it’s not going to sustain. And one of my favorite quotes is from If Disney Ran Your Hospital, and he says in there, People don’t do what organizations expect, they do what’s paid attention to. And that’s so true. It’s, y’know, one of the reasons why I joined Aspire Fertility, which is Inception Fertility. Our CEO, TJ Farnsworth, he had an entire guest experience manual that when I came on board, he believed in it so much, he invested in the Disney Institute himself, and his whole executive team going and creating this amazing program. And so, my job is to bring that to life, of course, and to continue to add ot it and expand it. But having that leader, having that person that truly believes in it and not just says it, but also invests in it through training supervisors and recognizing and redirecting, that is the secret sauce, most definitely.

GJ: I think that’s an advantage of large fertility networks. I want to see if you agree, because I think part of the problem-- I’ve written about this a lot, I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast-- part of the problem a lot of independent practices are facing, is because there’s not someone in that leader role. I’ve got my accountability chart on my wall right here, it shows who’s the visionary, who’s the integrator, and we’ve got operations, sales, marketing, finance, legal, all the seats that come underneath them. More than one… one person can be in more than one seat, but one seat cannot be occupied by more than one person. And the goal is, because I’m someone that built my company completely organically, is that I’m phasing myself out of the seats until I get to the top. The problem with independent practices is, that physician/owner, or the main physician partner, is in several different seats…

LD: Yes.

GJ: Or at the top, there’s a practice that’s split four different ways, and maybe the equity isn’t 25/25/25/25, but there’s not a clear role of like, ok, but who decides what the direction of the company is…

LD: Yeah.

GJ: And I think that problem manifests itself in so many ways, not the least of which is when you can have someone leading the company as a visionary that says, ok, now, doctor, you are the medical director, you are in charge of this entire branch. Lisa, you are in charge of experience. I really think, Lisa, that as fashionable as it is to say, and we just had David Sable on the podcast a few weeks ago, and I got a few emails that said, this business investment into the fertility field is bad, I got a lot of feedback from that episode. A lot of people that were interested in Dr. Sable’s commentary, but a lot of people who just don’t like the idea of business having this merger into our field. And there are probably are bad things that come with it sometimes, there are bad things that come with it sometimes, but this cannot be understated, the ability to have an organization that’s able to adapt in this way. So talk a little bit about that-- about the leadership structure. You talked about the practices you visited, but it could be a real advantage to have structure in that way.

LD: Yeah, no, that’s a great conversation to have.Y’know, one of the many things that I’m learning is… and certainly I don’t mean to keep bringing you back to TJ, but he came from oncology. And he… y’know… there was talk out there, well, this isn’t a fertility guy. This isn’t a fertility guy, right? And it was really interesting, because I just have to smile, like, well, ok. I just have to tell you how much we’ve learned from oncology. And some of the great things, and I find that the blend of having people who’ve been in the fertility space for… that’s necessary. It is a very different journey, and that is valuable. And having the mix of the two, and as mergers happen and as business people come into the fertility space, as long as they have an understanding of the journey and TJ and Margaret were patients themselves, so they personally went through the journey, so that was a unique thing for them, but if they understand the journey, wow. We could really learn a lot. One of the things that I encountered as hurdles is in trying to teach patient experience or trying to encourage and equip for changing culture is that we do the same things the same way, and y’know, in medical in general, and one of the things we’re really tackling right now, and that I know other practices have as well, but other groups as well, and especially as you get larger, are the phones. When you think about our structure on the phones have been the same way throughout medical for as long as we all can remember, right? Some practices have the front desk, the concierge, the patient advocates, whatever you call them, answer the phones, and some of them have call centers, but what happens is when you really start to dive into our patient experience over the phone, and the amount of calls that get missed or abandoned, it’s mind-blowing on how we miss out on delivering a great patient experience the first time, and even on the followup. And my point being, you know, other industries, you know, you can call certain companies and you know you’re going to get a live answer, and you know you’re going to get a pick up or at least you know you’re going to be able to speak to someone, you’re not going to be transferred to a voicemail. Why, in fertility, have we continued to do it the same way? Why do we continue to have phone calls go right to nurses voicemails? They can’t answer them. And they’re… that’s exactly what they should be doing. Why are we expecting that they’re also… they’re also able to pick up, y’know, thirty calls a day? Why aren’t we looking at things differently? And that’s what sometimes some of those outside perspectives can bring. When we just bury ourselves in the “this is how we’ve always done it and nobody understands fertility because it’s very different” that’s a danger zone for us. And so I think, I really believe that the mergers and some of the partnerships that come from the outside are very, very valuable in looking at things differently.

GJ: I think it’s so important to see how other industries, other categories are doing things, because you can see a pattern that would be so beneficial.

LD: Yeah.

GJ: We do it all the time. I really pay very little attention to what other agencies are doing, other internet marketing agencies are doing, because I generally think it’s useless. I pay so much attention to what infertility patients are doing. We’re obsessed with it. We sponsor a lot of patient-facing programs and events even though we don’t have any patient facing offering,simply because we want that understanding for our own clients to be able to develop marketing programs for, but there’s so much in the exterior that you could learn from, and I think that one of the challenges, then, for a larger fertility center, would be making sure that it’s the same experience at Location A, which might be on the completely other side of the country as Location B. The one advantage that a ten-person single doc REI practice has, as long as they’re really good people that treat their people well, they’re probably gonna have a pretty good patient experience, as long as… y’know, there’s just not any big process issue missing, I can tell, when we’ve got clients that only have ten or twelve people on staff, there’s one doc, but everybody in there is just so sweet and kind, they’re probably gonna be all right, right?

LD: Yesss.

GJ: But then, as you start to scale, that’s when we’ve gotta make sure that the same quality and care and kindness and attention are at location B, C through E-- how do you do that?

LD: That’s a really good question. Earlier you talked about the benefit of merging practices, and how, y’know, we talked about how there are great advantages to that, and I’m gonna step back and talk about those beautiful, sweet boutique practices that have not decided to merge and grow, and have decided to stay in their hometowns and there… I’ve known many practices like that that just deliver a great patient experience, and are beautiful boutique practices. And those who choose to grow through a merger or acquisition, how do you scale that, right? One of the mistakes I think we make is expecting to scale it exactly the way they did it. One of the things that I’m learning throughout the mergers and acquisitions that I’ve been a part of is that we…if we expect to standardize everything, including the experience, that is not a realistic expectation. And it hurts morale, and it’s very challenging and it just… it can be very frustrating. And so the way that I believe and the way that we are certainly going about our new merger with the wonderful Prelude network is that it’s important that the personalities-- the practices keep their personalities. Every practice, every demographic has their personality, right? And has something different that they bring. So it’s important that we honor that and that we keep that and we preserve that. And then just adapting some things that might help them. And see what can enhance that instead of going in and trying to change everything. How do we create continuity in the things that will enhance what they’ve done, what everyone has done very well and yet to be able to standardize things and preserve their great culture. So it’s really a blend, it’s not one or the other, it’s really a blend, and every practice is different. And some practices may need more integration of standardizing somethings and other practices just may need a little bit, right, and so I think the more we can standardize perhaps our branding and our messaging to the patients from a marketing standpoint— you’re the genius in that, so I won’t even claim to speak to that, but I would think from the patient’s perspective, if we could look and sound the same from a marketing standpoint, that is valuable. And when they come inside, they feel the different personality of the practice, depending on where they’re at. I think that’s the sweet spot.

*ad break*

GJ: Is one way of standardizing without standardizing, so another way instead of just everybody has to do A, B, C,D, and E, and that’s what the patient experiences, is another way of having a consistency of the patient experience involve firing people? Getting the wrong people off of the bus? Because one of the questions that my creative director Ashley had was have you found yourself being challenged by staff who think that patient experience doesn’t make a difference, in your consulting or in anything. And I think of an interviewee I had for a project manager that had worked for really high-end agencies at much bigger agencies for bigger companies and was really impressive with his project management skills. This guy could, would really take care of certain projects for us. But… he was a dick.

LD: *laughs*

GJ: I didn’t want him in my… one of my criteria is that it doesn’t matter how good someone is, they legitimately have to enjoy helping other people. Or they cannot be.. If they can’t play nice with the other girls or boys, they can’t be on the team, period.That sabotages meritocracy in my opinion. In answering that question, have you found yourself being challenged by staff that aren’t bought in, and two, does standardizing without standardizing, making the patient experience consistent, involve getting the wrong people off the bus.

LD: Well.. sure. Definitely. I think, though, when you talk about standardizing, it’s really a culture, it’s really… and patient experience is really a culture. IF they are not using a certain verbiage, we’re not gonna script everyone. You want the spirit of it, you want the spirit of the letter of the law,right, and if they don’t have, and you’ve heard this, it’s probably overused, if they don’t have the DNA, right, you certainly, yes, most definitely. But that, again, goes back to the accountability of the coaching and redirecting. And that’s that middle management level, and y’know, we are expecting the doctors who are running the businesses and especially the practices where the doctors are really running the business, if we’re expecting him to make, or her to make those decisions, that becomes very difficult. Because how do you assess that, right? Yes. So those people in that middle supervisory role to be coaching that and to be redirecting, celebrating when it’s happening and redirecting when it’s not, when it’s not, a redirect is just like a performance, a behavioral issue, right? If it’s a constant redirect ,and it’s not happening, it’s treated just like being late,or not doing something right from a procedure or a policy or a guideline standpoint, and so it should be treated just like that. And absolutely I have gone into practices where you have the majority of them going Yes, and you can see the ones who are skeptical, or negative, or just don’t quite believe. But you know what? What’s really interesting is I find that a lot of time in my experience, that those people-- it’s not that they don’t believe, it’s that they’ve been disappointed so many times, that they haven’t felt that heard. That they haven’t felt that… or their processes, that they’re just so buried in them, that they look at me and say, are you kidding me? I don’t have time for that! And so my heart, y’know, my heart certainly goes out to them. I have found that I’m a lot less judgemental in that area, where I prefer to really dive into, ok, hurt people hurt people, right? What is the root of that? Why is that? Why is it that you’re not wanting to? There are two reasons why people don’t do things-- they don’t want to and they don’t know how. And if they don’t want to, there’s a reason. It’s discerning those two things, first of all, making sure it’s not an I don’t know how, first of all. And if they don’t want to, dig a little deeper into that. Why do you not? And if they just don’t? Then the are not right. Absolutely. There’s a better fit for you someplace else, this is not the place for you. And we all have been part of cultures where it takes just one toxic person to ruin an entire.. And that’s actually one of the last teaching modules that I came up with before I stopped consulting is on gossip and toxic culture and how that is detrimental to a healthy culture. And how we, when we allow that, how that transcends and translates into the way we deliver and how the way, y’know, everyone delivers their patient experience because internally, we’ve got to deliver a great experience to each other in order to do it externally. So if somebody internally is gossiping, or undermining or being passive aggressive, or any of those things, that is not going to work. And if they internally are doing that? Then we can’t expect them to externally deliver.

GJ: You’re right. It’s much better to discern the culture, especially if it’s one that is willing to adapt before just axing people. I guess I’m in the position of… I”ve been doing the discerning and then I’ll ax if I feel it’s appropriate...

LD: And that’s the right thing--oh, I’m sorry, Griff, I’m sorry.

GJ: It can’t be understated that there’s two… maybe you see more, but I see two temptations for keeping the wrong people on the bus. The first is, I don’t want to let them go for whatever reason, because I feel bad, because they’ve worked for me for however long, because they’re nice in these other areas or for whatever reason it might be, I don’t have that problem. I will let people go if they’re not right for the organization. What I have had more and what I think a lot of the people listening have also faced is that replacing them might not be super easy, especially if it’s… nurses aren’t always easy to replace. Embryologists aren’t easy to replace. There’s a lot of people in our practices and labs that are in their positions because there’s not that many people that can do them. So I think that keeps people from letting the wrong people go. I don’t know if you see any other reasons, but that’s the reasons that I see.

LD: Well, most definitely, the fear of not being able to find somebody with fertility experience, right? And that’s a whole other subject, succession planning. One of the best things we can do is raise people up from inside. So these… we know they have a heart for it, and they understand the journey. There’s such a big fear that I can’t let this person go because they’re the only ones that can X Y or Z, right? And so that’s hard. And again, and my experience in just summarizing that, when we see somebody that is not willing, digging a little deeper into why-- is it compassion fatigue? What is it? What is why? And is that fixable? And if it’s not, yes, don’t waste any time- it’s not a good fit. But, I have personal experience in instances where I would have initially made a judgement and without digging would have really not understood the resistance and that’s something that could have been turned around.

GJ: I want to make sure that we touch on how much patient experience becomes part of the standard care. Part of the reason why-- not the reason you’re on the podcast, but the reason I remembered that time was that I was having an interview on this show with Dan Nayot from Toronto, and we were talking about you and talking about an application that we had learned from you regarding personality tests. And he— I always looked at him as just the doctor that every patient wants to have, and in many cases I think that’s true. But he did also say that for some people, they don’t want my style. They don’t want a nice guy, they want a guy who’s gonna be quick, in and out. And I thought, well, that’s fair too. And we talked about the concept of having Meyers-Briggs personality matched patient to provider, maybe even patient to provider to support staff, so maybe you can talk about that and just in general how patient… how it just becomes the standard.

LD: Sure, sure, absolutely. Well, and I’ll speak specifically to why I did the personality profiles is one of the things I learned throughout consulting is that we differ, of course, we’re all one body but we’re made of different parts. And we all receive information differently; I’m a very big picture thinker, when somebody comes to me with a lot of details, after the third detail, I’m squirreling on them. I’m all over the place. So I thought, gosh, if I were a patient, sitting with a doctor who was very detailed, I know that I would walk out of there so overwhelmed, because I would have squirreled on her or him after the third detail, I would have called the next day to say hey, I have questions, when I’m sure that those questions were already answered. So the original thought process was well, y’know, can a personality profile really help us understand who our patients are and match them up with a physician and a team that would be best suited for them. There were two questions on the Meyers-Briggs that I had really honed in on. And the one is… are you... how do you see information? Are you big picture, or are you detailed? That’s a big one. You’ve got a detailed person…

GJ: Can I interrupt you for a second?

LD: Please! Please!

GJ: I love this story… I love telling.. I remember when you had us do this exercise, at one of the ARM meetings. And you separated the group, you said if you receive information by detail, go to this side of the room, big picture folks, stay here. I’m in the big picture group, and I’m thinking, all right, what’s really going to be the definition-- you had us look at a portrait where, there’s some stuff going on, I think it’s somebody—

LD: Yeah, yeah!

GJ: And the detailed person crushed.. And then you had us get together, the big picture folks, we wrote down what we saw, you had the detail people write down what they saw. Our summary was like, ‘A cold Christmas night, someone had just returned from being outside all day and now is warming up by the toasty fire of their family home.” And the detail people were like, “We see six candles…”

LD: “7:15 on the clock..” *laughs* It was 7:15 on the clock, yeah… and that’s a great example. I love doing that exercise. Because that demonstrates exactly how we can look at something and see it completely different! And how often does that happen with our patients? And if we go back to internally, how often does that happen in communication with each other, internally? And it really works both ways, so that category of detailed versus big picture is an important one. The other one is how do you like to plan ahead? I talk about this-- this drives my daughter crazy, because she’s a planner-- she likes to make a plan and stick to it. She doesn’t want options, she wants to know what to do and that’s what we’re gonna do. And then there are the perceivers, which are more go with the flow, more spontaneous, change is a little bit easier for them. They want options, we want options, right? So she would say, pick me up at 5, I’d get there at 5:05, and she’d say, “The plan was 5.” And I”d be like, really? Seriously? And again, how does that relate to patients? Some want the physician to say, this is the plan, this is exactly what you need to do. Some want more options-- this is my recommendation, and here are some options for you. So if you knew those two things about patients, if you knew if they were detailed or big picture, and if you knew how they like to plan ahead, wow, you could really customize a great experience. And even if it’s not with a physician with the same personality, even if they just understood it, it could really make a big difference. And we actually played with that when I was at RMA of Texas, Dr. Arredondo, we actually did a two question Myers-Brigg in our new patient paperwork. And the doctors loved it, and they were able to customize the new patient paperwork. Now, let’s talk about from, remember, we talked about the Effortless Experience and how processes are important? How that helps with processes is… y’know, every practice, when I go to a practice, I say, how many of you deal with wait time issues, and everyone raises their hand. How many of you, the doctor’s running behind? And there are hands all over the place. So we know the doctor doesn’t run behind. We know they’re spending additional time with patients. But what the personality profile allowed for those big picture patients that instead of an hour appointment, it was 45 minutes. So it gave them a little bit more margin for those detail patients that needed a little bit more time. So we were able to look at efficiencies and we were able to look at our processes and how that helped our processes. So there’s, y’know, there are many good things that come out of it. And, of course, internally, people just understanding each other, internally.

GJ: So I want to point out to the listening audience how much there is here and how important this is to consider, and it’s not just high ceilings and yoga, which I think patient experience is sometimes thought of as, but it really affects the standard of care in this way that if you had that match with patience, how much easier would that make treatment, would it make communication with patients, would it make the burden on your staff? So, Lisa, you’ve done this for a lot of clinics, you’ve consulted with small practices, you’ve worked in medium-sized practices, you now work for a network, how would you want to conclude, with everything that’s going on in our field, where do you want to see patient experience go, and how would you want to conclude?

LD: That’s a great question, Griffin, I think, again, in this season-- this is a new season for me as well. I think I would conclude this by challenging everyone, including myself, to not look at things the way we’ve always looked at them. To really look differently, and to really strive to understand the patient’s expectations. But in order to do that, and in order to no matter how much information we understand the patient, the first place we need to start is in internal culture. And if there’s anything that you take away from today, it would be to make an investment in your internal culture, in your team, in really understanding what their needs are and understanding what their expectations are. We talk about understanding patient expectations, but what about your team? What about your team? They expect us to give them all the tools that they need to be successful. They want the margin to be able to deliver a great patient experience. If we don’t give them margins to do that, if our processes are hindering them from being able to do that, we can invest in patient experience programs until we’re blue in the face. But really understanding our teams, understanding their hearts, understanding their challenges, understanding their expectations, and that being a constant part of what we do, and that is checking in with them all the time. How can we help you to deliver great patient experience? How can we make this a great place for you to want to come to work every day? How can we impact your life and be more than just work? How can we be a family? That’s what I would conclude with.

GJ: Lisa Duran, Chief Experience Officer of Inception Fertility, thank you so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health.

LD: Thanks so much for having me. It was so great to be able to talk about this with you all!