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Everyone wants to grow their third party IVF program, but are we neglecting patient experience in the process?
This week on Inside Reproductive Health, Eloise Drane, 3 time gestational carrier, MBA, and founder of Family Inceptions, shares her honest take on how responsiveness and individualized care have declined, even as demand has stabilized post-2021.
Drawing from 17 years of experience running her own surrogacy agency, Eloise offers a kind but direct update on:
Why patient experience is harder than ever to deliver (and how to improve it)
How consolidation impacts intended parents and surrogacy wait times
The challenges of startups and in-house agency models in IVF networks
What she’s looking for in a surrogacy agency before considering merging or acquiring
Why the “same workflows” just won’t cut it for gestational carrier cycles
If your practice or network is looking to scale GC IVF—and actually retain intended parents—this is a must-listen.
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Eloise Drane (00:03)
It's not about whether consolidation is right or wrong. what it feels like to the people at the center of it. And when care stops feeling personal, that's when things start to break down.
Again, I'm not against consolidation. I understand the direction the field is going, but when it starts to chip away at the patient experience, we have to stop and look at that honestly.
Griffin Jones (00:37)
Everyone wants to do more third party IVF cycles with gestational carriers, don't they? We all want better patient experience, right? The way my guest sees it, patient experience, particularly with regard to responsiveness and individualized attention, has gotten worse, not better in the last five years, and has only continued to worsen even though most clinics aren't seeing the same boom they saw in 2021 and 22. Eloise Drane is a three-time gestational carrier and MBA.
and the owner of Family Inceptions, a surrogacy agency she's operated for 17 years. Eloise talks about what consolidation of fertility clinics has meant for intended parents of third party IVF, wait times for GC cycles, response times for intended parents, problems caused by startup surrogacy agencies, challenges faced by fertility networks that try to bring their own surrogacy agency in-house, and what quality she's looking for in other surrogacy agencies.
that she may or may not buy or merge with. If you're looking to sell your practice or fertility business or merge with another, talk to MidCap Advisors. Even if you're 10 years away from selling your business, but especially if you're within five, just give them a call because they're relationship people. Dr. Brijinder Minhas and Richard Groberg have worked in this field and done multiple deals. Robert Goodman, Scott Yoder have helped multiple fertility centers sell their business. That's midcapadvisors.com
An excellent patient experience is colossally hard to achieve in this field. You have so many moving parts in your workflow. You're dealing with variability in real human beings during the most stressful period of their life. I have to acknowledge how hard this feat of having a truly excellent patient experience is. Otherwise, we won't be able to be honest when it isn't being achieved. And this is an honest take. For those of you that
want to increase your IVF cycles with gestational carrier, and especially for those of you that want to improve your clinic or your network's patient experience, listen to this kind, but direct update on the state of patient experience from Eloise Drane
Griffin Jones (03:07)
Ms. Drane Eloise, welcome to the Inside Reproductive Health podcast.
Eloise Drane (03:12)
Thank you for having me, Griffin. I appreciate it.
Griffin Jones (03:15)
been a long time coming is consolidation, helping or hurting third party IVF.
Eloise Drane (03:23)
So honestly, what I'm seeing right now is this big shift in how third party is being handled, especially with consolidation. More clinics are starting to bring these services in-house, and I get it. The space is growing. There's more capital coming in, and it's largely unregulated. So it makes sense that people are exploring new models, but it's not really working.
that way in practice. know, agencies were created for a reason. This work is complex. There's so much that goes into these journeys that you don't see on paper. And when it's not handled the right way, people feel it the most, or the people that are feeling it the most are the ones that are going through the process. And third party isn't something you just tack on. It's its own world. And when it's not treated that way, the experience falls short.
Griffin Jones (04:15)
Is that their reasoning for doing it though? Do you think that, okay, it's not something we tack on and if it's in an external agency, maybe we're viewing that as being tacked on and we want to bring it in house so that we can control costs, we can control the experience. Do you think that's part of their rationale? And if it is, what isn't living up into the way it's actually executed?
Eloise Drane (04:39)
Well, honestly, I don't know if it's not about whether consolidation is right or wrong. It's about what it feels like to the people at the center of it. And when care stops feeling personal, that's when things start to break down. And what I feel is off with the consolidation is how it's being presented because the networks are talking about a lot about how focused they are on patient care, how their systems are more connected and efficient.
And I get why that's the message. And it sounds good, but especially in third party, it's just not what we're seeing. This isn't, this isn't a plug and play kind of field. These journeys are personal and complicated. And what's actually happening is that the care is being affected because of short staffing or the process of managing cases has changed. It's not always clear who's handling what.
and that creates gaps. So it's commonplace now that GCs medical records or even getting a GC scheduled for an appointment takes months. And it's not that I'm passing blame, it's just that the system isn't holding up the way it needs to. And when that happens, people go through this process, people going through this process are the ones that are feeling it the most.
Again, I'm not against consolidation. I understand the direction the field is going, but when it starts to chip away at the patient experience, we have to stop and look at that honestly.
Griffin Jones (06:09)
Tell me more about how it's chipping away at the patient experience. It sounds like in some cases there might not be enough staff. sounds like it could be really, it could take a long time to even get an appointment. Tell me more about what's happening to the patient experience in your view.
Eloise Drane (06:25)
So prior to, and I know we kind of do everything pre-COVID, post-COVID, And pre-COVID, it did not take months and months and months to get surrogates medical records reviewed. And for these intended parents that are coming in and someone has told them that they have to use a gestational carrier,
Griffin Jones (06:32)
Yep.
Eloise Drane (06:50)
or they already knew that they'd have to do gestational or surrogacy, they're ready to go. There's already a shortage on the surrogate side. And that's not anyone to blame, but there is a shortage on the surrogate side. And so...
When you add on to the shortage of the surrogate side and then you get to the fertility clinic side, you finally found your surrogate, however you found it, whether it's through the an agency, whether it's through you found them independently, what have you. The last thing you want to hear is I'm ready to go, but now I have to wait two, three months. and also getting charged to have medical records reviewed.
for my candidate, but I'm sitting here waiting. And then when we finally get the medical records reviewed, now we have to wait several more months just to get her a consult so she can speak to a doctor to review the medical records with her. And then once we get that done, then that's when we can go ahead and schedule an appointment for her medical screening.
Griffin Jones (07:56)
When you break up pre-COVID and post-COVID like this, you said it wasn't like this prior to COVID. Are you saying it's still like this now in, we're recording in Q2 of 2025? I could see in, it's worse. So I could see in 21 or 22 when practices had really long wait lists, volumes were up everywhere and everybody had wait lists. But people don't really have those kind of wait lists anymore.
Eloise Drane (08:08)
it's worse. yes.
Worse. Worse.
Griffin Jones (08:23)
relative to what they did two or three years ago. And you're saying it's worse than Q2 2025. Tell me more about that.
Eloise Drane (08:30)
Yes.
So as I mentioned, just trying to get appointments. And it's not just appointments. Let's be honest here. It's support. We've had multiple cases in which trying to reach out to fertility clinics to get a response, whether it's us, whether it's the surrogate, whether it's the intended parents.
that are trying to get information from fertility clinics, it's sometimes it's damn near impossible. We've had clinic where,
through their portal, no response, through email, no response, phone calls, no response. Can't get anybody to respond back to an email. You send out multiple requests. You still don't get anything. They tell you go through their portal. They don't respond to the portal. It's like, what exactly do you expect people to do? Because you are the medical provider. You're the one that's providing the care. And
You're saying you're providing care. You're saying that you're creating these networks because it's supposed to make things more efficient and it's supposed to help things along the way. You're adding these portals to help the flow of the process become more efficient. But all it is is adding a bottleneck because you have staff that don't necessarily have the time to sit there.
and go through the portal request, or if they do go through the portal request, they put a response in and then they leave, what if there's follow up? What if there's issues? What if there's concerns? This space is so unpredictable. You don't know. I've been in this space now for over 20 years. And I've personally been a surrogate three times. I've personally been a donor six times.
And I can tell you every single journey was completely different from the next one. So.
Griffin Jones (10:24)
I knew you were hardcore, Eloise,
but I didn't know that you were a surrogate three times.
Eloise Drane (10:28)
Yes, I was a surrogate three times. delivered twins the first time, a boy the second time, and a girl the third time. And every single one was a
Griffin Jones (10:35)
Did you work with the same fertility
clinic each of those three times?
Eloise Drane (10:38)
No, I worked with different fertility clinics.
Griffin Jones (10:41)
three different clinics?
Three very similar experiences with regard to the clinic or were those experiences very different from one another?
Eloise Drane (10:51)
So, correction, so I worked with two clinics for two of the journeys and then another clinic for another journey. And I would say even the clinic experience was different. They were years apart, so things definitely had changed in that timeframe. But the journeys itself was as different as you and I are different. There's no one, two journeys that's the same.
Therefore, there's not a process that you can just plug in and think that it's going to work out and it's going to be the same because it's not. Because what we're dealing with are human beings. We're not dealing with just names in a system. So you can't...
Griffin Jones (11:29)
think all of
us nod our head and say, yeah, that makes sense. They're all different. But then we don't think about it too much of how they're different. What specifics can you recall, either from going through it yourself or from managing all these cases? Help somebody that doesn't understand or doesn't think too deeply about it the specifics of what makes one case different from another.
Eloise Drane (11:51)
Are you human?
Griffin Jones (11:52)
hope so.
Eloise Drane (11:53)
Okay. It's different. Think about it. Every single person in the universe is a unique person. So just because she's a woman and she's going to, she's agreed to be a surrogate doesn't mean she has the same feelings. Doesn't mean she has the same wants. Doesn't mean she has the same desires. Just because an intended parent has gone through infertility doesn't mean that they hold that space of what they've endured previously as someone else who did it.
or who did just because somebody is a same sex couple doesn't mean that they're not going to have the same angst as somebody who's gone through infertility. Just because someone is a same sex couple doesn't mean that they're going to have any needs or, know, they might just say, okay, you know, I already knew that I was always going to have the situation. So for me, it's no big deal, but you can't go in assuming anything because when you assume you always turn around.
and it comes and bites you in your ass. I hope I can swear under our shelf.
Griffin Jones (12:54)
Is it the patient
concierge-ness that is so involved? Is that what you're saying here? that because people, they need so much handholding and so much, like they need responsiveness and...
Eloise Drane (13:01)
The full journey.
Hello everybody.
Not everybody needs hold handing. Not everybody needs the responsiveness, but everybody needs the care. Everybody needs the empathy. Everybody needs to think you care about their process, about what they're going through, about their journey, just as much as you care about the next one. No one is more important than the next one.
When you are trying to reach a fertility clinic because you've ran out of medication and you need to get a refill and they tell you put the information in a portal. Great. I've done that. That was five days ago. No one's responded to my portal. Send me an email. Great. I've done that. No one has responded to the email. call me. Great. I've done that.
No one is returning my phone calls. Okay, well, let's get the parents involved. Okay, the parents can't get ahold of anybody. Well, the agencies also have been trying, but the patient is the surrogate and the parents, not necessarily the agency. So you're sometimes at the mercy of whomever. So again, it's not because it's every single case.
But the problem is that we cannot keep thinking that you, as they're putting it, that patient care is the most biggest priority and people are making sure that the patient care is what they're focused on. I'm seeing different on boots on the ground.
In theory, that's what you might be focusing on. In theory, it might be, you know, that click bait that you're using. But I've been boots on the ground. The agency, my agency is 17 years old and I can tell you it's worse now than it was previously. And it's only getting worse. And I'm not gonna only pass blame on clinics. There are a lot of agencies that have started in the past five to eight years.
all, you know, I started my agency because I'm going to do better than the next one because I didn't have a great experience and so forth and so on. And quite honestly have no business starting an agency because they don't know what they're doing. They've actually are causing more problems for the industry. They're causing more problems for fertility clinics. And again, I understand why clinics are doing things the way they're doing them. But
My concern is that because you're doing them or because you have more patients coming into your practice or because your numbers are increasing and your P and L is going up, doesn't mean that the patient care is still there because what we're seeing is the opposite. Last year, just in, I don't know, a couple of months, we had numerous intended parents across the country asking for
if we could recommend them to different fertility clinics because of the experience that they were having with the clinic that they were at. Not necessarily medical, but because they felt unsupported. They couldn't even get a phone call back.
Griffin Jones (16:23)
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in the show notes of this episode in the email where it goes out and just start the conversation because they don't charge anything for that. So reach out to Bob Goodman, Virginia Minhas, Richard Groberg, any of those folks from MidCap Advisors. Otherwise, it sounds like it's gotten worse in the past few years. Do you think, is it the portals, do they make it worse or are they just not better? So is it just the case that, you know, it was supposed to make
this back and forth with the email going away? was supposed to make the phone tag go away and it didn't and it's just the same? Or have the portals actually made things worse in your view?
Eloise Drane (18:23)
I don't know if I can say the portals have made it worse.
I think that the portals obviously are there to serve a purpose. And I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. I just think that you need to actually have someone though they're checking those portals on a consistent basis. Because if that's how you're telling people to communicate and you want to keep the communication.
streamlined and efficient. Great. That's wonderful. I think a portal then is perfect. And that's exactly what this should be doing. But is it really working? Because then if that's the case, how come we keep having intended parents complaining about the portal or the surrogate complaining about the portal that they've put information in the portal and nobody responds? So it's I don't blame it. The portal. Who was supposed to be managing the portal?
Griffin Jones (19:17)
It hasn't taken away the people issue behind it. Should the portal be automated in that sense? Are there areas where the portal can be automated? Or in your view, is there too much going on in third party that it can't be automated?
Eloise Drane (19:20)
Come
I mean, I don't know if it can be automated or not. I'm sure it probably could be. And I'm sure that there's probably things that, you know, scheduling an appointment or something minor that doesn't need a human response can probably be automated for sure. But when you're going through something, when you need a question, when you have a question regarding medication and it's timed,
and you're a donor and you're about to take a trigger shot and you're supposed to take it at, you know, nine oh four PM and you're reaching out because you have a question and you've sent it and you're waiting on this response from a portal that you sent at, I don't know, 12 PM and here it is five PM and you still haven't received a response and it's six PM and you know you're on crunch. What are you going to do?
Griffin Jones (20:25)
In your view, are one of these categories better than the others between independent practices, network operated practices, and academic institution practices? Are they all in the same boat or among those three, one or two of them tend to be better about patient experience?
Eloise Drane (20:44)
I can't say one or the other. they all have great points and they all have faults as we all do. I'm not going to sit here and make it seem like, where the end all be all and we're perfect and we don't have issues. We all do. It's, it's a business. There are going to be issues throughout the business. The issue is not about whether a network is better or an independent.
one is better or you know one through a university it's better. It is about patient care. Do you have the proper staff who's experienced, who understands and who is responsive to that patient in order to be able to address their concerns? And their concerns isn't always about what medication I need, what my schedule is, what the issue is. Sometimes their concern is emotional. Sometimes their concern is
I am literally biting at the bits because I just took my blood test and I'm waiting to find out if I'm pregnant or not and it happens to be on a Friday and I am waiting to see if there's results because you guys keep telling me do not take blood home test. So I didn't and now I'm waiting and
It's now six o'clock on Friday. I took that blood test at 8 a.m. I never got a response. So Saturday no one called me. Sunday no one called me. Monday morning I'm still waiting. I'm calling. No one can respond to me because they're seeing patients right now. We've returned phone calls after 4 p.m. So from 8 a.m. on Friday morning when I took my blood test till 4 p.m. on Monday
And this is not just a made up story. These are actual real life stories that we're talking about.
Griffin Jones (22:31)
And
you're not just thinking of one example either. This has happened multiple times at multiple different places.
Eloise Drane (22:33)
Correct! Multiple times.
Correct. Across the country.
Griffin Jones (22:40)
Did that get worse in your view in like a big spike? Like obviously COVID was probably a big spike, but you said even after 21, 22, it's only gotten worse. Have there been other big spikes or is this been more like a, just a solid trajectory of, it's getting less responsive, it's getting less organized? What's that been like?
Eloise Drane (23:05)
Oh no, I don't think it was a spike, but it has been gradually getting worse and worse. For sure. It definitely has been getting worse and worse. And you know, if it was just me saying it and just like, well, you know, I mean, we're the only ones really experiencing it. Fine. be it. But we're not, um, you know, just like doctors talk to other doctors, the agency owners talk to other agency owners.
And we are not, you know, or should I say I am not the only one experiencing this. This is across the country, across the board. And it's not just agencies who are talking about it. It's the actual patients, the surrogates, the donors, the parents. They're the ones coming in, having conversations with us about
these experiences that they are having. And the only thing that we can do is encourage them to go back to the fertility clinic and have conversations. And I do have to say that when intended parents have gone back and they've spoken specifically to the RE, things change. Not in all cases, but often once they do speak to the RE and say, hey, this has been happening, this has been going on, this is whatever, things change. Sometimes for
a short while. Sometimes, you know, it fixed the problem. But unfortunately, that's not always the case. And I don't necessarily want to sit here and just pass blame on the staff either, because it's not always on the staff either.
The industry, it's great that it's growing and expanding. And shoot, when I was surrogate the first time, wasn't nobody talking about surrogacy? It was a taboo thing. I literally had clients and I wish I was exaggerating, but I had clients who used to get the fake pregnant belly so that no one knew that they were working with a surrogate. They didn't want anybody to know that. That wasn't something that they wanted anybody to know. Now it's out, it's free for all.
It's wonderful. And that is amazing. I'm happy that that has happened. But at the same time, we cannot forget the reason why we decided to become professionals in this space. When we raised our hand and said we wanted to do this and help somebody build a family, we take on that responsibility. And quite frankly, I feel like this space, this industry, the professionals in the industry, we are letting the people that we're supposed to be taking care of, we're not.
Griffin Jones (25:34)
I would expect you to be able to get an answer from a clinic if time has really gone past the time where somebody should have gotten a response. That's pretty frequent, but often you'd expect like, well, they're gonna pick up the phone for the agency or they're gonna put you on their list to call back faster. Did it used to be like that?
Eloise Drane (25:43)
No.
It used to be.
It used to be, but now, I mean, even to get access to a portal, we're told that agencies, they don't provide access to agencies on the portal list, just to the patient.
Griffin Jones (26:05)
So you are in the dark, you don't know what's going on. When patients have then come to you and said, we're not digging this, we wanna go to another clinic, who do you recommend? What do you do?
Eloise Drane (26:08)
Sometimes, yes.
Well, we first find out if there's anything that we can do to help the situation at their current fertility clinic. And we do try to reach out to the clinic and like, hey, can we move this along? Can we, is there anything that can be done? And if the answer is no, then we give them recommendations of clinics that we know do have patient care and do.
follow up and do community. mean, it's basic communication, basic. Just respond, respond in a timely manner. I mean, these weren't patients of mine, but friend of ours did IVF and it was the transfer was successful and that about nine or 10 weeks along went in for an ultrasound. There was no heartbeat.
And it wasn't an RE who did the ultrasound. It was one of the nurses. The RE was unavailable. So they were told that someone would give them a call. That was like on a Thursday.
Wednesday of the following week, no one had still called them. And she now knows, obviously, there's no heartbeat. She's miscarrying and no phone call, not a response on a portal, not an email, not a phone call. They kept calling. They kept leaving messages, nothing, to the point where she ended up in the hospital with an infection. So these are not
This is not again something on a P &L that we need to be so concerned about. These are people's lives that we're dealing with. And again, it's not that I'm necessarily blaming staff, but at the end of the day, we all have a responsibility to do what we say we're going to do. And again, basic communication. If you say you're going to do something, then do it.
Griffin Jones (28:12)
I think what you are, what you're on right now is the epicenter of the patient experience issue, this issue of responsiveness. maybe I'm wrong about this. I might be wrong. I'm making it up without data. It seems to me like it might even be more important than bedside manner. And I think bedside manner is hugely important. Don't get me wrong. But this responsive, this responsiveness issue is one that operations.
Eloise Drane (28:30)
Mmm.
Griffin Jones (28:37)
can solve, right? Like there's only so much you can solve with the bedside manner to an extent. You can do some, you can do operational support, you can do training, you can match people with different personality types, but responsiveness, this is something that we're supposed to be addressing right now. It's been the complaint since I've been in the field since 2014. It sounds like from you and others that it's only been getting worse, not better despite these systems. We have a lot of systems that
can address it or at least parts of it, but you still need the people to execute those systems and those systems really, really need to be properly implemented and they need to be checked frequently to make sure they're working because it sounds like they're not and the stakes are really high in this situation that you just described especially.
Eloise Drane (29:22)
Yes, the stakes are really high.
Yes, the stakes are really high. But in addition to that, now you're adding in third party. So you've introduced a surrogate or a donor or both. And you as the clinic are now offering full service management. So you are barely communicating on the clinical side.
But now I'm expecting you to communicate throughout the entire journey. And throughout the entire journey, it's not just I get somebody pregnant and then we help them at the end once the baby is coming. Because there's so many nuances throughout a surrogacy journey that you cannot predict. And what may something might look like it's going to be a simple, smooth journey ends up being disastrous.
But you want to bring in third party services in-house because again, you feel that the efficiency or, you know, there's no regulation. So why not? We can do it better. We can assist the parents. We can make it more cost effective. But are you? Because just because you can't quantify somebody's emotional experience and you can't put a dollar figure to it,
doesn't mean that you're doing better because you saved them $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever the case might be. At the end of the day, they are still human and everybody, including yourself, you have a child. There's nothing you wouldn't do for your child. So you mean to tell me that you're going to be okay with you half-assed God.
information when you were going through the process on the clinical side. And now you're supposed to be being managed throughout the entire journey where you don't know anything of this process. You're trusting somebody else to take care of the most precious thing in your entire life to you. And you can barely get communication. just put a response, put an email or put a message in a portal and we'll get back to you. Are you kidding me right now?
Griffin Jones (31:30)
Does this ever make you feel like you need to do some consolidation? Like you mentioned a lot of those me too agencies, meaning like, we're agencies now too, that they can be causing problems. Would you ever think, well, you've got a little bit of book of business. Let me buy you or let me, maybe there are a couple of other independent surrogacy agencies. know what? They're solid. I need to merge with them, become partners with them. Do you ever think about that?
maybe we need to consolidate over here on this side to match that scale so that we have more of a force when we're trying to get a hold of these folks or trying to advocate for the patients.
Eloise Drane (32:10)
Yes, I have, I do. And it's still something I still think about. But at the same time, I want to make sure that when it's done, it's done right and it's not half-assed. And there are agencies out there who are phenomenal agencies, who have been in this business for a very long time, who actually does really care.
about the surrogate, parents, and ultimately the child that we are bringing into this world together. So yes, I definitely do think that there is possibilities for that. Am I ready for that right now? No. Because I want to, again, make sure that whoever you go to bed with, if you so to speak, that you're on the same accord.
Getting into a network with other agencies is a marriage and you need to make sure that that is going to be a good marriage. And, you know, for a lot of people, you've started these agencies from nothing and you've built it and you've grown it. You've seen it grow to where it is. One, you don't want to just give it away, but two, you also want to make sure that you are equally yoked with that person.
or that group or that other company that's coming in and making sure that you have the same values and that you can see the future together. Are you always going to see eye to eye? Absolutely not. My husband can tell you that. We've been together for 25 years and he'll always tell you that, no, we don't ever see eye to eye. However, we're willing to compromise. So, well, he's willing to compromise. I just keep going as I go. So here's that.
Griffin Jones (33:51)
Well said. My wife says the same thing. And I bet you see eye to eye occasionally. It sounds like you know what the must-haves for that type of partnership would be. and it could be just the opposite of some of the bad examples. You said many of these newer pop-up agencies have been causing problems. What type of problems did they cause?
Eloise Drane (34:11)
Yeah.
So just because somebody has a uterus doesn't mean they qualify to be a surrogate. And unfortunately, some of these agencies don't know that or they don't care. And they are not properly screening candidates as they should. They're getting medical records, matching them to an intended parent and saying, here you go, they're ready to go.
And then leaving it up to these fertility clinics to review the medical records and kind of be the bad guy and says, no, sorry, she doesn't qualify. When in reality, all of that should be done way before an attendant parent gets matched to a surrogate. And these agencies that are starting, they really do not understand the magnitude of the decisions that they are making when they tell somebody,
Yes, you can be a surrogate. And I have heard, known of agencies that will get medical records, fudge medical records, you know, because again, for them it's, well, she wants to be a surrogate and I really want to help her. Well, that's great.
She wants to be a surrogate, she doesn't qualify to be a surrogate. That's why there's qualifications involved, because it's not for everyone. I shoot, I wish that I could be a pilot and get on my own plane. But one, I'm afraid of heights. So I mean, I'll get on a plane, but I'm not going to be a pilot.
But two, it's just reality is there's some things for you and there are some things that are not for you, regardless of whether you want them or not.
Griffin Jones (35:52)
What are the upstream consequences to clinics of putting an unqualified surrogate through the process?
Eloise Drane (36:01)
that this woman could literally cause harm to herself, cause harm to this child or both. And then of course in turn cause harm to these intended parents. We're not playing with toys. These are life or death situations. We're playing with human lives. Like this is not a joke. It's not something that you can just think like you can come in and it's not gonna be a big deal. You are taking on a humongous responsibility.
And we have a responsibility to the parents, we have a responsibility to the surrogates, and ultimately we have a responsibility to the children we're helping to bring into this world. And we have a responsibility to try to give them the best opportunity to have a healthy outcome when they are born. Is it always going to be the case? No. Can we play God? No. No one is trying to sit here and play God. But at the same time, we, when we say yes,
we're willing to do this, we have a responsibility to make sure that we follow the guidelines and the directions that are set forth so that we can give them the best opportunity that they can have.
Griffin Jones (37:09)
Doctors have a responsibility as clinicians. Business owners have a responsibility to their business. They have a responsibility to work with the best partners and get the best outcomes, especially when it comes to the time of their exit. MidCap Advisors is a persistent, reliable partner. They provide you with industry insights. They provide you with strategies to maximize value.
They've been experts in mergers and acquisitions. They provide professional resources for optimizing these very complex transactions. They're very proud of the end-to-end service model that they provide and they will meet with you. They will talk with you. They won't charge you anything for that consult. You'll get to meet some of these folks. Maybe you them at the meeting, Dr. Virginia Minhas, Bob Goodman, Richard Groberg. Maybe some of these names are familiar to you in these faces. They'll provide you with
business analytics, they'll help you discover more of your own. They've worked on industry-leading valuations and achieve those for their clients. They have a six-step transaction roadmap. You might ask them about that for a little bit of more information. They have a very high transaction close rate. They've got a big referral rate from previous clinics that have worked in the space that are very happy to speak on their behalf. And they've also represented clinics
who've transacted with them multiple times because they did such a good job the first time that they come back to them. So if you're even thinking, maybe it's 10 years down the road, five years down the road, especially if it's any less than that, these are people that you want to talk to. So we'll put their contact information in the show notes and you'll be able to find them in other places to click on. But it's MidCap Advisors. Go to midcapadvisors.com. Whether you're talking to Richard Groberg, Dr. Minhas or Bob Goodman.
Let them know that you heard about them on Inside Reproductive Health and check out MidCap advisors. Otherwise, who do you think is, what are the examples that really good agencies have done? So you said, we're not the only really good agency out there, but you've been doing this a long time and you know what's good and you know what's phoning it in. What are those things that the agencies that do a really, really good job and have earned their stripes in this space? What are the specific things that they're doing?
Eloise Drane (39:24)
So first, they are bringing in candidates, requesting their medical records, are reviewing their medical records or have physicians that are medical professional reviewing their medical records. They're doing background checks, they're doing full psychological screening on the candidate as well as her partner. They...
are doing an evaluation on her, understanding what her lifestyle is, understanding what her background is, understanding what her motivation is. They, I mean, for us, we also do a home visit on all of the surrogates that we work with. And they're preparing her, not just.
we're checking off these boxes, but they're also having conversations with her to make sure she fully understands what it is that she's getting herself into. Because we all know, every pregnancy as a woman, you put your life at risk, whether you're caring for yourself or somebody else. Unfortunately, the...
Maternity care in this country, I think, has definitely declined from years past, especially for certain demographics. And it is where we really need to be careful on who we accept into the program, how we vet them, how we prepare them, how we ensure that they really are good candidates.
And a lot of these agencies that have been doing this for quite some time, who have painstakingly gone through various experiences that you can't just fake it till you make it type of thing, they are doing the right work because they know and they've experienced like, well, if I don't, this is what could potentially happen. And so therefore,
They are making sure that they are providing the intended parents with a good candidate to give them the best opportunity to be able to have a healthy child.
Griffin Jones (41:29)
These folks, want to improve patient experience. Maybe they say they are more than they're actually currently successfully achieving that, but I know that it's important to them, meaning the practice owners, the network folks, the operations people, know that it's important to them to improve patient experience. I definitely know that it's important to them to get as many of these third party cycles as they can do done because they like money, they need it too, like the rest of us.
They don't want to just lose patience because after it already takes so long to even find a surrogate, now there's a couple months of even being able to get your treatment started. They definitely don't want that happening. So let's say I'm one of these network CEOs and we have our big annual meeting and all my docs are there, my third party coordinators are there, and I hire you, I pay you, Eloise Drehan, to come in and consult my team.
What do you want them thinking about? What do you want them preparing for for the future?
Eloise Drane (42:30)
Really it is, what I would want them to do is realize that third party is layered. This is not just IVF with a few extra extras. It's its own thing. And it's a whole different experience. Emotionally, logistically, all of it. And there's no one size fits all. Every journey is different. And what works for one case might completely fall apart from another. And it's not predictable.
And if you want to take on the responsibility of saying, we're going to add third party services to our business model, OK. Who is there that has the experience and the understanding of this process that is working on your team? And don't just tell me, well, we hired somebody because she's been a surrogate before.
That means nothing. She's had her one experience. And I know a lot of people will say, well, you were a surrogate and you started an agency or there's many of other people who are just surrogates and started an agency. But yeah, many of them though, including myself, I started an agency after working in corporate America for 15 years and having an MBA and being in business and
Then I started an agency and also when I started an agency 17 years ago, it's vastly different than what it is right now. So you can't just start an agency just because you've been a surrogate one time and you think you're qualified or you can't be hiring somebody that's been a surrogate one time and think that she understands the
magnitude of people's different emotional beings. Because you're dealing with a lot of different personalities, different experiences, people from all different walks of life coming in and you have to handle all of it. You have to be able to manage all of it. That's why all of my team that are client facing are licensed social workers. Yes, some of them have been surrogates before, but
They also have to have the professional experience. It's great to also have the personal experience as well, but you have to be able to know what you're doing. You're not, again, playing with toys.
Griffin Jones (44:52)
Louis Jane, I enjoy following you on social media. Two or three years, people can fake the funk for. 17 years has a way of weeding out the phonies from the real. And I'm glad that you were fair, you were kind about what's going on, but I'm glad that you didn't pull any punches. I wouldn't have expected you to, but you were as authentic here as you've been on social media, and people need to hear about it because...
We're aiming for a target. We've got to be honest when we're not hitting a target. And we need to be hearing from the people with a lot of experience that have been in the weeds. And so we're going to also include information about your firm, Family Inceptions, and we'll tag you in all of those places. I hope that people reach out, and I look forward to having you back on the program.
Eloise Drane (45:39)
Well, I appreciate Griffin. And there's one last thing I actually want to say too. I think that if we don't start making changes, just like the adoption world back in the days where the government had to step in and come and regulate, what's going to prevent it from happening here? And that is the last thing I want happening is government stepping in to regulate anything in this space.
Griffin Jones (46:03)
very well said. Thank you, Eloise.
Eloise Drane (46:05)
Thank you.
Griffin Jones (46:06)
All right.
Eloise Drane
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