On this episode of the Take Good Care podcast, Drs. Williams, Guthrie, and Greene continue their discussion on who Rosa Gynecology is. They dive deeper into the actions and activities they have done as business owners and physicians that support who they think Rosa Gynecology is and what Rosa Gynecology believes.
Transcript
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to Take Good Care Podcast.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
An endeavor that grew out of our love for obstetrics and gynecology.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Our aim and mission is to serve as a source of vital information for women of all races, ages, and walks in life.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I am Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to our show.
Welcome to this episode of Take Good Care podcast. I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We want to thank our audience for sticking with us this season. We’re actually going to pick up on a conversation that we had with our previous episode where we really got into thinking about who Rosa Gynecology is now, what Rosa Gynecology believes. Just like we did when we had some episodes a few shows back on individually discussing who we are, what we believe, and what kinds of activities or actions are we doing that support that, we want to really talk about and think about what kinds of actions or activities that we’ve done as business owners and as physicians that support who we think Rosa Gynecology is and what Rosa Gynecology believes. As a review, do either one of you want to say who you think Rosa Gynecology is for you?
Dr. Karen Greene:
I like Deanna’s definition.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I had said we are a women-led and owned venture that offers women of all walks of life, comprehensive gynecological care.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm. What I said too was that to summarize all of that, is that Rosa Gynecology is a place for women to thrive. It’s a place for all the women who traverse this practice as owners, providers, patients, staff, that we really want to have a business entity that supports all of us thriving. What we are going to talk about this episode a little bit more is what kinds of things, specific actions that we’ve done as a business to try to make that lived, support the belief of the things that we mentioned with our previous episode that Rosa believes, and then who and what Rosa is now. Do you guys have any things that come to mind when you think about at the kinds of things that we’ve done previously over 40 years and then the kinds of things that we are doing even now as we continue to evolve as people and as a practice?
Dr. Karen Greene:
I think one of the main things that we did, probably started in 2020, where we really started thinking about the business and the team aspect of running this business. Traditionally, businesses have one practice manager, and so we reorganize how we look at things for a number of reasons, so that a lot of this stuff could function if a person wasn’t there. The team aspect of managing our practice in terms of team leaders so that there’s a leader so that she, because there’s nothing but she’s here.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, we have some men that come and help us out.
Dr. Karen Greene:
That’s true. They do help us out.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Special present company including. We don’t want to, don’t want to diss the brothers.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Kind of like the Amazon.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We don’t want to dis the brothers, but go ahead.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Having people that will, as we call the front office and the back office, our clinical as well as our clerical staff so that there has one person that knows what’s going on with that particular area of the office and one person knows what’s going on with the other particular area of the office, but all of them know what’s going on together. If a person is gone, they don’t leave with their information or they don’t know what the other person doesn’t know. Fostering not only the team aspect, but the team communication. I think that has a lot to do with how we communicate. I do think that’s something that we need to do better, but I do think starting that process of thinking that way and kind of working as a group and working as not the single think, but kind of the group think of collaborating so that patients as well as our staff understand that we collaborate as a team and we work together. We’ve always worked together. It’s not one, but all of us, all of us are in this together.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s true. It actually started a little bit before 2020 because as we were, again, we transitioned from an OB/GYN practice to a GYN only practice in 2016, when we decided to stop obstetrics and just continue as a GYN only practice. As we were continuing to mature in our clinical practice of medicine, many of the women who were involved with the administrative practice were also maturing, and many of them were approaching retirement and some actually retired prior to 2020. Now the blip of 2020 with covid and all the things happened to covid, definitely encouraged probably a few more of our mature, more senior members of our leadership team to leave as everyone re-evaluating just life, work, all the things that were going on at that time. The genesis, the foundation was definitely started probably more around 2015, 2016, and then it really started to be activated as ladies would leave certain positions beginning in 2020. Deanna, you have anything else or Karen, you all, other types of things? That was a good one.
Dr. Karen Greene:
I guess the other thing that comes to mind is just in terms of really trying to listen to our staff and finding ways to see what they see and see from their point of view things that potentially need to be done. That always isn’t obvious to us as owners or as physicians because the staff sees things a lot differently and finding ways to have workshops and have ways that we can communicate better. People communicate differently, recognizing that if we don’t know how to do it or Google it or look it up, we can find someone who can help us with that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I would say, well, for one thing on the clinical side in this whole thought of comprehensive care, and this was done from the very beginning with our founding partner, that we offer mammogram onsite. When a woman comes for her wellness visit, she can also have her mammogram if she chooses. Sometimes there’s a reason why she can’t have it onsite with us, but that is to capture that possibly not needed second medical visit that’s a limiting factor for a lot of women because of life, busy schedules, taking care of kids, have to take another day off from work to have another procedure done. That’s one thing that Rosa Gynecology has always done, is offer that onsite mammogram to complete that kind of gynecological wellness visit out.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s good. Also, let the audience know, again, as we continue to evolve and improve ourselves in terms of our own clinical skills, we improve the technology in the office. Remind everyone what we also did.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
We also, last August, August of 2024, we upgraded our mammogram to 3D mammography, which is now becoming standard of care. There were a lot of women who, because of having dense breast tissue, it was being recommended that 3D mammography be the initial screening for them and recognizing that so many women were coming in and needing that. We just, like I said, from a business standpoint, but also from a clinical clinical standpoint, made the decision to proceed with that. We now offer 3D mammography in our office.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Right. You also recently, and I’ll talk about this again in a minute, about things that we’ve done to try to support who we are and what we believe. Dr. Guthrie serves as kind of our personnel and our facilities physician administrator. She had a meeting with our mammography department recently, and one of the things that you all reviewed was the number of mammograms that we’re now doing and what we’re finding because of that.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Yes. Because we are not losing those patients who need the 3D mammogram because of dense breast tissue or possibly follow-up from a workup or even family history of breast cancer, we are now doing more mammograms than say we were doing before. Also, we’re finding that with more mammograms, you’re going to get more abnormals, I’m going to put that in parentheses, or mammograms that need further workup. That doesn’t necessarily mean more things are wrong, you’re just capturing more things that need attention. We’re finding that some of the things that we’re now capturing with 3D, again, which is the whole reason for doing 3D, is because they weren’t really being seen on 2D mammography. Possibly finding something that may have been missed. With the upgrade in technology, we’re doing better as far as serving our patients with mammography.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And catching things early.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We’ve talked about this in some of our other episodes about why we do screening tests at all and paps, mammograms, various different things. It’s because we need to pick up if there is something abnormal, we need to pick it up early. The majority of the time, even if you have an abnormal finding, it doesn’t mean that there is something significant or dangerous or detrimental to your health, but it may need to be treated and removed so that that doesn’t happen. That’s one of the things.
Two things I wanted to pick up and piggyback on in terms of what kinds of specific actions or activities we’re doing as a business to support who we are and what we believe. I just want to give a little bit more information about what Dr. Greene was saying. Probably three things. One, the whole concept of us creating a culture of safety in this office. Dr. Greene mentioned about making sure that we have created spaces and been very intentional about having regular staff meetings, having regular team meetings as Dr. Guthrie did with the mammogram imaging department, or with the front office staff or with our clinical staff. We have regular meetings that encourages our staff to speak up, to provide us with their input about what they do day in and day out, but also if they see something or recognize something that we haven’t necessarily picked up on or could potentially be a problem for a patient or for something administratively, we empower them to say, “Dr. Williams, I really need you to do,” X or, “Dr. Williams you may want to watch this because this could potentially be a problem.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We encourage everyone to come to the table and to speak. We will take what you say as valid and important and evaluate it to see if it’s something we need to change. That culture of safety is one of the specific things we do. The fact that we have now regularly scheduled staff meetings, so we don’t want to wait that there’s a problem before we discuss anything, we want to make sure that our staff understands that we want to hear what you say. Because we want to hear what you have to say, we’re going to make sure that we’re intentional about scheduling time to do that.
The other thing I wanted to talk about is just how we design the whole business, the setup in terms of from the time you come in the door, we don’t want you to come into a very sterile feeling environment with hard surfaces and white walls and pointy edges on furniture.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And crunchy gowns.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Crunchy gowns, paper gowns that don’t cover anything. We’ve been very intentional about that. We have designed our reception area for our patients so that when they come in, you’re sitting on comfortable furniture. We have educational videos and entertaining videos playing on our television monitors. It just creates a sense of, okay, this is a place where women understand what women need, just the creature comforts, not just the clinical stuff. Once you come to the back to the clinical areas to be seen, the same thing. We’ve created private spaces within the environment of the exam room so that patients don’t have to just strip and just be standing with no clothes on while the provider’s talking to them. Those things, they seem little, but they mean a lot.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It does, it does mean a lot.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It goes a long way for creating the kind of environment that we want to create for patients as well as for staff so that the physical feel, like we said all the time, we’ve said in previous episodes, people walk into the office like, oh, okay, I can talk here, I can relax here, I can cry here, and it’s accepted. Anything else y’all? Any other thoughts?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
How about this podcast?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
We want to empower women, educate women, and serve the community. I think that’s first and foremost with the podcast that we’re doing, providing information, entertainment sometimes.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
A lot of times.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
A lot of times. Hopefully bringing to the female community and not just female community, men can get good information from our podcasts to about the female life.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Mm-hmm. I think it’s good that one of the reasons behind the podcast is we want people other than just our patients to see what we do and how we do it and why we do it so that they say, “Oh, okay, this makes sense.” We say all the time, “If you’re not in the area that we serve, please talk with your providers, ask the questions, be empowered.” We want to not only empower our own patient population here in this area, but also other women because I think that that should be the standard of care, that women feel empowered when they speak to someone and they get the answers that they understand because clear, concise communication is key.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And consistent communication.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Yes.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Again, our whole social media presence is one of the things that we’ve been very intentional about. Again, that started I think back in 2010 when we really launched our Facebook page. Since then, we have branched out into the other social media platforms to provide information. Again, it’s not just information about our practice, while we love our practice, and if you’re in need of a wonderful gynecologist, please feel free to reach out and call us. We have many providers, the three physicians you have here, and then two wonderful nurse practitioners. We’d be happy to see you for your gynecological needs. Again, our social media presence is not just about promoting Rosa Gynecology, it’s about promoting patient empowerment and it’s about promoting patient education.
We are posting blogs, we’re posting videos, we’re posting information about women’s health so that whoever you see for your care, you have information that empowers you to speak up and advocate for yourselves wherever you may go. Yes to the social media presence. I totally agree with that. Of course, the podcast born in March of 2020, it’s a covid baby. Yes, we love our little podcast covid baby. We enjoy doing this and we hope you enjoy it. I have other things. You guys have anything else you want to throw out there?
Dr. Karen Greene:
One of the things you always say, if you’re looking, we want to give information that is evidence-based. Because the Google machine is out there, we would like to provide stuff that we know is evidence-based so that when people want to look for something, they can think, oh, let’s look on Rosagynecology.com because I know they have blogs. I know they have information. I know it’s evidence-based. I know because I know they care.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Greene:
If someone says that, I’m good.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm. Some of the other things I have listed here is that we have, again, we don’t know everything, but we can pick up a phone and make a call. One of the things that I’m so happy about that we’ve done, in addition to creating a collaborative leadership model within our office, we have created and collaborated with outside partnerships, whether it’s our production team, JustEldredge Media Productions, who have partnered with us as it relates to our social media presence and our podcasting to really take us to the next level. We have wonderful business relationships with accountants who’ve been with us for decades. We also have other IT support personnel that are partners with us. They’re not employed, but they partner to help us do what we do and to make sure that when Epic goes down, oh, excuse me, when our electronic medical record system, you didn’t hear me name it, when it occasionally has this little glitches and blips, we have someone we can call for that.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We also recently, as a part of our rebranding, now partner with a wonderful marketing firm. As we’ve evolved as Rosa Gynecology, formerly known as Peachtree City Obstetrics and Gynecology, we’ve created partnerships with other entities that help us do what we do, who understand who we are and what we believe. They are bringing their expertise to the table to help us do the things we need to do to support that.
The other things that I wanted to talk about is we talk about our staff empowerment. Two different things. The principal owners, yours truly present right now on this podcast, are having our first ever principal’s retreat where we’re going to be have a facilitator who’s going to come and help us plot out our course for the next 10 years. Again, I think one of the things that we’ve talked about just forever, not just with this podcast, is that we really try to be intentional.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We really try to be thoughtful and we understand we don’t know everything, we know how to ask. We’re having our first facilitated principal’s retreat, which I cannot wait to do that. What we have also done over the last year is that we, again, because we believe in empowering our staff and making sure that we work better internally, is that we’ve had facilitated stress management workshops and communication workshops for staff and physicians. We’ve never done that, which I think is important. Again, it helps to support who we are and what we believe.
Again, I already mentioned that we did the regular leadership team and department meetings, but one of the things we did back in, I left my brochure right there when we went to a four-day work week. We talked about in the previous episode that we believe in work-life harmony/balance, and we also believe in home and family. When we made the decision back in, when was it Dr. Guthrie?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
’17.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
’17. When we made the decision back in 2017 to go to a four-day work week, that action was definitely done to support who we are personally and as a corporation, what we believe personally and as a corporation. I think because of that, has really allowed us to fully thrive and evolve as individuals and as a business because it gave us a built-in reset button.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
What’d y’all think about that?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Absolutely. Just thinking about even how we were doing OB before, it was just the next step in the transition of work-life harmony. First step was to stop OB, which can be very, very demanding, going to gynecology only. Then like I said, with the one-day break.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Before we would, you almost had a built-in half-day when we did OB that when you took call, you worked half-day the next day. You were able to take time to do the things that you needed, doctor’s appointments, taking care of just your business of life. When we first did GYN only, and it was a five-day work week, we found that you were almost working as hard when you were an OB because it was nonstop.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Didn’t have time to do anything personal.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
No time personally, no days off. That definitely made a difference for me, I can say.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Oh, for me as well. I mean, just having that built-in day reflects.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Not gust for us, for the staff.
Dr. Karen Greene:
For the staff, the staff needs it too, and I think that that’s something that we recognize as women, that women have a lot of things on their plate and a lot of things to do. If we can let our staff have that day, they can do those things just like we needed to do those things, as opposed to the half-day post-call, half-asleep day that we used to have.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Or even before, we had some employees that did have a day off, but everybody had a different day off.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yes, it wasn’t coordinated.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Even with some things that functioned in the office, say for instance, if somebody needed surgery schedule, if a patient happened to come in on the day that the surgery scheduler was off, they would have to wait to hear.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Things were kind of uncoordinated in that way.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Chaotic.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
A little chaotic.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Just a smidgen.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
One person was off on Tuesday, the next person was off on Wednesday, the person was off on Thursday. This actually coordinated all our efforts so that we are full service every day that we are in the office. All departments are functioning full service every day that we’re here.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Absolutely.
Dr. Karen Greene:
As with everything, we looked into this in detail before we made that decision, and I think that we came out on the plus side.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It was an obvious one, but we still did our research. We still looked at the data, we still looked at everything to say, “These are the pros, these are the cons.” There were so many more pros. It makes life manageable because life can get a little crazy. That reset button for us, that reset button for the staff is so important.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Again, just for those of you who are picking up on the conversation and maybe did not hear the beginning introduction or even at the previous episodes, we’ll suggest that you go back and take a listen to that. What we’re doing here is just continuing a conversation that really was born out of our appearance on the Portia Show back in the fall of 2024. What we ended up talking about on that show was how we as individuals and as business owners, really try to make some changes to go from chaos to calm. Again, that wasn’t to, in any way say that we figured it all out and that we have no problems. It’s to say that we continue to check in and to say, what can we do to make sure that we’re creating all the resources we need to create to support who we are, what we believe, and to make sure that we’re able to continue to do what we do.
In this episode, we’ve been talking, continuing the conversation about as an entity, our workspaces, what kinds of things have we looked at and done to foster that sense of calm and coordinated activity as a business. We’ve been listing some things that we think we’ve done perhaps several years back and even more recently, and a few more things just to add to some of the things. These are a little bit more practical things. Again, prior to 2010, we didn’t have a lot of electronic digital resources.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I shouldn’t say that. We didn’t want to use any of the digital resources that were available because we were used to paper and paper charts, but not just paper and paper charting, but also just communications within the office, people walking back and forth. It was just sticky notes and just things that were not sustainable or safe when it comes to certain clinical communications or administrative communications. One of the things that we have done, definitely since 2010, is that we utilize digital communication resources, Teams, what’s the thing that I love?
Dr. Karen Greene:
Slack.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Slack. Mironda loves her Slack. I love my Team’s messages. I love texting, I love emailing. Again, the reasons for it, and it can get to be, I think for some people, annoying. The point is that this is business and we have to be able to follow certain things and document certain things, make sure we go back. We close the loop. Many times we’ll say, “Oh, we need to do,” this, this, this, and this. Well, who’s going to do it? When is it going to be done? Then we have to go back and check did it get done.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We’re all busy. We all have so many things going on. If we don’t use our resources to document and our checklists as we have in the OR, how many times do we have checked time-out? Then you have your time-out to the time-out, and then you have your pause for the gauze, because why? It’s about being safe.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s not to assume that it gets done because if you don’t document that it was done and then double check that it was done, things happen.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
The same principles apply in the office. We have written as well as digital manuals, policies, procedures. Everyone knows I’m like, we got a problem in the office, let’s get a policy or procedure to fix it. If you try to fix it with a person, if the person leaves or the person is sick, then you still have a problem. By having manuals, policies, and procedures, it programs all of us for success.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It doesn’t rely on memory. It doesn’t necessarily rely on someone’s particular talent because you can go look and see what is the policy, what is the procedure, where is the manual. Let me go back, check the email. Did I complete everything that we needed to complete? I think our adoption of digital and tech over the last 15 years has been key to helping to calm some of the chaos and to make sure that we’re able to stay on top of what we need to stay on top of as a thriving, profitable, clinically astute business that stays cutting edge, not just on our clinical abilities, but on our business acumen as well.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
All of those things I think are important to provide the actions and the activities to support who we are and to support what we believe so that we can keep doing what we do and do it with excellence we hope. Anything else you ladies want to add?
Dr. Karen Greene:
No, I think that sums it up.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I think that’s a lot.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I think we’ve done a lot.
Dr. Karen Greene:
We have done a lot.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Lord knows, and we love what we do.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I hope what comes across with all of our talking and our episodes is that we truly are passionate about what we do. We’re passionate about our patients. We’re passionate about our staff. We’re passionate about this business that we were entrusted with. We want to have, just like Rosa provided us with this platform, it’s a legacy that we cherish and we intend to leave it for the next entity or entities to continue because it’s a service that is needed and will be needed far into the future.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Definitely.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Thank you all for listening and once again, to Take Good Care podcast, we are so appreciative of our audience and our listenership. Please continue to check us out wherever you get your podcast episodes. We’re everywhere. Also, Facebook, Instagram, our website, rosagynecology.com, we’re on YouTube. You can find us, I promise. Just Google Rosa Gynecology. Until we meet again for our next episode of Take Good Care podcast, I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Greene. Take good care.