Best Practices: Kindbody
Founding physician, Dr. Fahimeh Sasan, on changing the fertility conversation.
Dr. Fahimeh Sasan, a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Assistant Professor of OB/GYN at Mount Sinai, is the founding physician at Kindbody, a new clinic offering the full spectrum of fertility resources set to open in Manhattan in June. Clients have the option to choose from services ranging from egg freezing to dietary planning and talk therapy. We caught up with Dr. Sasan about how Kindbody was developed to not only meet current modern fertility needs, but also build a lifestyle of empowering women to think proactively about fertility in their day-to-day lives, demystify the process, and bring wider awareness to the topic culturally.
Tell me the founding story of Kindbody and your involvement.
When it comes to women’s health, we are, as a culture, very reactive. With regard to fertility, women generally wait until they have an issue to go to the doctor. Yet we know that 1 in 5 women have a premature drop in the number of eggs they have prior to the age of 35. Kindbody is switching that conversation to allow those women to take preventative action, whether that’s through diagnostic fertility assessments, or full-service egg freezing. We also offer Well Woman health visits. It’s a chance to be in control, just as we are in so many other areas of our lives. We’re higher up in the workforce, many of us are waiting to settle down and start a family. We should have the opportunities we want, and education and options around those should begin much earlier, in your 20s.
I was trained as an OB/GYN and did my residency at Mt Sinai. For twelve years, I was a part of a very busy practice delivering about 800 babies a year. I still do work at Sinai, but in August of 2018, I helped found Kindbody. Our CEO and founder Gina Barteshi had previously established Progyny, a brokerage firm between sizeable employers and fertility companies. Kindbody was the outcome of a need she had identified years earlier in approaching big employers who weren’t interested in a brokerage firm, but rather were looking to work directly with practices.
At the time, there was no fertility network large enough to accommodate Google, so we created one. The curious thing about reproductive practices is that they are extremely regional. Even some of them that happen to share the same name — when you peel off a layer of the onion — are conglomerates of different offices. What the Facebooks and Googles were asking for their employees was access to a network of women’s health practices that could provide both fertility care and basic Well Woman care. So that’s our mission. Currently our target demographic served is women 25–45, but eventually, we will expand from menarche to menopause.
You guys have a location in New York opening soon, and more in the works, right?
Yes! We are seeing patients now at 54th and 5th. Our flagship will open in June, at 102 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron district. We anticipate we’ll start accepting insurance summer 2019, and we have locations opening in Los Angeles opening mid-April and in San Francisco this summer.
Remember when CityMD opened in NY? There were urgent care centers on every corner, like Starbucks. A CityMD is very welcoming — it’s retail level, there’s always one nearby, and you can go for an earache — when your child is in pain for whatever reason — and sidestep a scary trip to the ER, not to mention the wait. We’re bringing that same accessibility to women’s health, with our big mission to demystify and improve access to fertility care. To that end, all of our offices are retail-level, not hidden in professional buildings and hospitals. For most women, the only doctor they see is a GYN, and many don’t even get there. Women’s health always ends up falling short, with many women telling themselves: I feel fine, I must be fine.
Can you talk about the role of technology in the patient experience at Kindbody?
When we talk about improving access, it’s not just about creating more locations. I know how busy I am, and I respect that my patients are equally busy — particularly in the fertility world where a sizeable percentage of women are working outside the home. It’s such a scary stigmatized field already.
We want to open up the conversation, normalize the process as much as possible, and integrate it into your day-to-day life.
We’re finally seeing this with Michelle Obama when she spoke about miscarriage and IVF. There’s an unfortunate sense of failure at what we think our bodies should be able to do.
Part of integrating the process into our client’s lives was to make every part of the experience as streamlined as possible. We’re the only fertility practice in the country taking online appointments. We are also changing up an age-old system of getting calls from the nurse when your dosage has to change, which makes some people nervous because they really want to see that kind of thing in writing.
We purchased own proprietary EMR system and built a patient portal from the ground up. You can make an appointment directly online, and also access that portal to be able to see your results. Something else we’re working toward is really improving the patient experience at home through tech. For example, say you’re a patient and your test results for estradiol require an increase in your injection dosing. You’ll get an alarm reminder through your app when it’s time for you to give an injection, and you can simply click a button to view a video of how to self-administer that injection. We also always have one eye towards bringing down costs. If you can automate tech for portions of the process, you reduce your overhead. Instead of 20 nurses calling 100 patients, we aim for 5 rockstar nurses ready to spring into personalized action when someone does have an issue.
I’ve seen some of the interventions you’re hosting around town. Have those been well received?
Yes, we’ve been sponsoring fertility pop-ups in van form. We also have weekly educational seminars in NYC and will begin doing them on the West Coast this summer. We’ve had events in NY, the Hamptons, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The mobile van is a space for women to come and get information about fertility as well as a blood test that allows them to measure their AMH, or anti-mullerian hormone, which is produced in the ovaries and is one part of the picture of your body’s fertility. The first part is free, and we will follow up with you to discuss the results. If you want a full fertility assessment, you can come to our office for an appointment. We’ve tested the blood of almost 1,500 women since August. Many of them are so thankful because they’re overwhelmed and just don’t know where to start.
Vital Signs
Favorite patient amenity? First and foremost, definitely the customer service and individualized care. Every client gets a Kindbody patient navigator, a skilled clinician who serves as your go-to person. You have their phone number and email and can contact them if you have questions on your medication or if you forgot how to give yourself your shots, for example. We will even FaceTime you at night to help you through the injection process.
Reading any great books? I’m a big fan of a set of fiction stories by Irwin Shaw, an American author active in the 40s and 50s.
Any good food by your office? — I like Num Pang Kitchen — everybody has a rice bowl!
How do you keep balanced during the work week? It’s easy when you love what you do to work all the time! And that’s true for me. One thing I love about our office is that it's founded and run by women — we pride ourselves in allowing our team members flexibility in their hours to achieve a good work-life balance.
Learn more about Kindbody here!
Know an innovative practice in NYC? We’d love to hear, introduce us here!
