Day trip to Palm Springs
I went for a one-day trip this weekend to catch part of the 2008 meeting of the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society. Those of us who do IVF have many meetings we can attend where we can exchange ideas with each other. For, example, this year, ESHRE is meeting in Barcelona. I’ve never been to ESHRE, but I’ve been to Spain and I sure would like to go back. The other big academic meeting is the ASRM meeting, which I will almost for sure be attending, as its location this year, San Francisco, is relatively close. These two meetings consist primarily of people presenting their research. There is another annual meeting that is more like an IVF review course, and that is held each year in Santa Barbara, sponsored by UCLA, my alma mater (well my infertility fellowship alma mater, anyway). Go Bruins!
PCRS is a much smaller meeting, but unique in how casual and non-pretentious it is. In the registration materials, there was an actual statement to the effect that “anybody who shows up in a suit and tie will be asked to go back to their room and change into something more fun”. The presidency of the society, which changes yearly, is a thankless position undertaken by an RE who while still attending to the daily duties of his/her own practice, must somehow manage to find an average of five hours a week to deal with the administrative matters of the position, most notably organizing this annual meeting.
It just so happens that this year’s PCRS president is a friend of mine and someone whom I greatly admire. We go way back, to the time when we were OB/Gyn interns together. We finished four years of grueling, but fun residency together before we went our separate ways to different RE fellowship programs. He then went on to build a small empire with two IVF centers in different states ( One in Reno, Nevada. One in Boise, Idaho ). That in itself is quite a feat, but doing so while still maintaining a pristine reputation as one of the nicest, easy-going guys around is not easy. He has also been happily married for close to twenty years, with so many kids that I’ve lost count. That is a rarity among RE’s, who ironically, for being doctors in such a family-oriented field, in general aren’t always known to have the most stable family lives themselves.
I also got to spend time at the meeting with another doctor whose story is pretty interesting. We first became friends when I had started my IVF practice for a few years and he was just about to start one himself. He likes to thank me for my helping in his getting set up, but I didn’t really do much. At the time, he was already an established general OB/Gyn and professor in Hawaii who was well known for his laparoscopy skills. He was with a group of doctors who had been doing IVF together for a long time. Like some of the other IVF doctors in his group, he was succefully getting IVF pregnancies without ever having done a formal RE Fellowship. In fact, his group was pretty much THE only IVF program in Hawaii at the time. (Hawaii is a cozy place). I still don’t know what kind of amazing ambition bug bit him, but he decided to go back and hit the schoolbooks to become a certified embryology lab director. For those of you who don’t know the difference, if RE’s are like pilots, then embryologists are like the engineers who build the planes we fly. There are a few amazing RE’s who are skilled at both. Imagine a pilot taking the time to go back and study engineering so that he can build a better plane and then to go on and fly that plane himself. So here’s a guy who did just that, and since then, he has branched out and built a new lab that because of the success rates, is now recognized by the “locals” in Hawaii, as the best IVF program, and over there, pretty much everybody is a local.
During the meeting, besides the scientific talks, I also heard a different type of lecture, one about practice management. A doctor from the East Coast spoke about being the single RE in a program that does an astounding 1000 IVF cycles per year! That is just insane to imagine. Logic would dictate that patients would not like it very much when they don’t get to see the doctor for more than a few seconds, but this guy has his PA’s, NP’s, RN’s and other staff trained so well that patients love it! He manages his 88 employees with principles learned from Ritz-Carlton, such as regular staff pep-sessions and daily motivational emails. Along with five-star treatment, patients enjoy a relaxed spa-like atmosphere complete with facials, foot massages and comfortable Pottery Barn furniture. This is a doctor whose employee management skills put many CEO’s with MBA’s to shame. I don’t know anything specific about the medical care there and I would guess it’s good, but I was amazed that such a thriving practice could be built primarly around customer service and it’s at least made me think a little about some new ideas for my own practice. However, I still don’t think we’ll be offering massages any time soon.
The medical talks I attended got me up to speed on the latest in PGD, embryology topics and some interesting controversial issues regarding the integration of IVF with Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture. I hope to write more on this in future posts.
Palm Springs was relaxing, yet productive. I met some great people, learned a little medicine, touched bases with old friends and got caught up on the latest gossip of who is now working whom in the musical-chairs world of IVF practices. All in all, not bad for one day.
