In part I of my visit to see Minnesota Hair Transplant doctor, Dr. Ron Shapiro, I shared what the accommodations are like and how to get to the clinic. Yea, I know; fun stuff! I always start my videos with that type of information because I know that a lot of people travel from outside of the region to visit doctors I work with so I feel it's important and helpful to my viewers to get an idea of what they can expect outside of the hair transplant clinic, not just within.
In part II of my visit to Shapiro Medical "Dr. Ron" takes me on a tour of the hair transplant clinic in Minnesota. We first meet Kelly, who is the office manager and basically makes sure that you have everything you need before you even arrive to the clinic. We get a breakdown of what her duties are and how she'll communicate with patients before their arrival.
Next up, Dr. Shapiro takes us on a tour of his hair transplant clinic which was much larger than I anticipated. Maybe that had something to do with the long hallway running from one end of the clinic to the other but there was quite a bit to see as you'll witness in the video below.
A Tour of Shapiro Medical Hair Transplant Clinic
What stood out to me early on about this particular hair transplant clinic were two specific things. First, the team was always walking in and out of the various rooms taking care of their duties while Dr. Ron and his brother, Dr. Paul Shapiro and their colleague Dr. David Josephitis, were doing their own thing. What this told me was that there is no real question as to what needs to happen. Yes, many clinics have this going on but when you have as much experience as I do you can get a sense for how hair transplant clinics are run and my sense was that this was a tightly run ship where everyone has their job to do and they know how to do it well.
The first thing we see on the tour of Shapiro Medical hair transplant clinic is the SMP room, where Nicole is performing a scalp micro-pigmentation procedure. Before Nicole joined the team at Shapiro Medical she already had several years of experience in the scalp micro-pigmentation field. This isn't just any SMP procedure she's performing now. It is tricopigmentation, the procedure I helped to bring to North America and first started talking about back in 2012 when I discussed it on The Bald Truth. Nicole is the first practitioner in North America to be trained in tricopigmentation and she was personally trained by the founder of the technique, Milena Lardi, in Milan, Italy. She's been back to Italy more than once for continued training and she's become one of the most sought after SMP specialists in North America. With Dr. Ron designing the hairlines and Nicole's steady hand Shapiro Medical has become one of the leaders in the field of scalp micro-pigmentation and their reputation is only growing. The patient she had this day was a patient that had to have his previous, permanent, SMP removed with multiple sessions of laser therapy which was not only painful but very expensive. He was much happier with Nicole's work which I might be able to show off in a later video.
Next we continued on down the hallway where Dr. Ron showed some interesting art work. He has on his wall several frames that have images of famous people from history and what he says are actual strands of their hair included in the frame. It's artwork only a hair surgeon, hair patient (or a stylist) can appreciate and it fits perfectly in the motif of this hair transplant clinic.
It was also nice to see they have a room dedicated to post-operative care and hair washes. I've seen in a lot of hair transplant clinics how the area where patients get a "day after" hair wash is crammed into a corner or is in a small room that looked like more of an after thought rather than part of the design of the clinic. This wasn't the case at Shapiro Medical. The room, as you'll see in the video, is a good size and it allows for hair washes and even hair cuts to be performed. I think this is a nice touch by the clinic and it is sure to help patients feel comfortable and looked after.
Because there are three doctors that work full time at the clinic they each have their own personal surgical rooms which is the ideal setup. This way they don't have to rearrange anything if they work in a room they aren't familiar with. You can see Dr. Ron's surgical suite in this video and it's a pretty good size. It's big enough for not only him and his patient but a full staff of technicians to do their job. Of course there is a big screen TV on the wall hooked up to his Apple TV so with over 300 movies on his account you shouldn't have any problems finding a movie to watch while you in the chair.
Dr. Ron gave me a good presentation on how he does things with regards to his clean protocols. I can't stand sloppy clinics. I detest them and I've turned down doctors in the past because their clinics were, quite frankly, disgusting. This isn't the case with Dr. Shapiro and Shapiro Medical and while i didn't expect his clinic to be anything less than excellent I have to go in with an objective attitude. I've been surprised before and you'd be shocked at what some clinics do, or rather don't do, that would be considered sanitary violations. Never EVER assume that any clinic you may be considering are doing things right because sometimes they aren't. One thing I observed about Dr. Shapiro is that he's at the forefront of the latest trends and tech in the field. It's probably because when someone comes up with a new idea or a new tool they tend to contact Dr. Shapiro early on to give him a sample or a prototype to see what he thinks of it. I can imagine how many tools he's got stuffed in a back closet somewhere! One of the latest tools he shared with me, that you can see in the video, is the newest motorized FUE punch designed by Dr. Jean Devroye of Belgium. Instead of rotating the punch like other motorized punches it instead oscillates back and forth, just like a manual punch when placed between the thumb and forefinger. Dr. Ron seemed pretty impressed by it and he has one of the first prototypes that he's been using for six months. This is not the first oscillating motorized punch as the first was designed by Dr. Allan Feller about ten years ago but it was a much larger and heavier device that never gained much popularity. We'll see how this latest motorized punch fares in the coming months.
At the end of the tour Dr. Shapiro showed me his photo room. This is a special part of the tour for me because I've always been super picky about how photos are taken by clinics and I have been critical of a lot of clinics in the past, including Dr. Shapiro, because of how results can be misinterpreted. I'm very happy to report that Dr. Shapiro not only changed the photographic standards of his clinic, they dedicated a room to taking photos and he invested in some nice professional quality gear. It is all very nice and exactly what is needed to get very clear and well lit photos that accurately represent teh
