Front Office

Our front office staff, including our new patient relations specialist, are friendly, helpful and accessible. This team is very knowledgeable about our services and will do their best to answer any and all questions you have as you go through the intake process. Always remember they are just a phone call away if you need anything. If they can’t help you they’ll find the person who can.

Q&A: Heather Barnes, Interim Front Office Supervisor   

Heather Barnes, BA.  Originally from the Greater Philadelphia area, Heather relocated to the beautiful Pacific Northwest to earn a degree in Sociology at Lewis and Clark College.  After completing her studies and deciding to make Portland home, she worked in the administration of a Natural Health Center before returning to school at Portland State University to pursue one of her other long-standing interests: Biology.  At PSU she was awarded a Graduate Research Assistantship in a lab studying membrane proteins of heart cell mitochondria.  Continuing with a laboratory focus, she began working at Oregon Reproductive Medicine as an Andrology technician in 2006.  Eventually, wishing to merge her interests in sociology and biology, she transitioned out of the lab and into Patient Relations.  In this position, Heather has the opportunity to draw from each of these fields of study to assist new patients in making an informed and easy start at Oregon Reproductive Medicine.  

What is your favorite part of working with patients at ORM?  I really enjoy providing new patients with information to orient them to the practice here at Oregon Reproductive Medicine.  It is exciting to help people organize the beginning of treatment when they have decided to move forward with us.

What makes you want to get up and come to work each day? This work provides me with the great privilege of assisting people who may be generally confused or unsure about how to start the process of building a family via assisted reproductive technology.  There are a lot of factors that many people do not anticipate and I enjoy helping them navigate it all.  I am very much in favor of intentional families and it is an honor to help people who want to become parents!

What would you like people in cyberspace to know about ORM and the work that we all do?    The people in our office really work as team, which creates a warm environment and a genuine investment in the well-being of each and every patient. Our patients' trials are our trials and our patients' successes are our successes.

 
Q&A: Heather Muller, Systems Development Coordinator

What is your favorite part of working with patients at ORM? My favorite part of working with patients is learning who patients are. There are patients that come here that really let their personalities show. What I mean by this is that they interact and become almost like a friend. They want to tell us how they're doing and what's going on in their lives. They want to bring in their children and show off what they achieved and what we helped them do. This is very rewarding and reminds me that we do something that really helps and makes a difference in people's lives.

What makes you want to get up and come to work each day? The thing that gets me up in the morning is that I know that my job is important and that giving patients personal attention is something I should take pride in.  We take the time to get to know our patients and make sure that they get time with the nursing and doctor staff.

Share a memorable patient or situation at ORM… Probably the most memorable moment I remember with a patient is a couple that graduated and became pregnant. They were discussing purchasing a different car because they had a Mustang --- with room only for two. Now anyone who knows me is aware that I love talking about cars. So we ended up having a serious discussion about whether they should get a minivan. Her partner said, "No way!" which, of course, I agreed with. It was a great discussion with everyone ending up laughing.

What would you like people in cyberspace to know about ORM and the work that we all do? I think that people should know that we're a different type of practice. We believe in personal attention and getting to know patients and treating them as people instead of just patients.