For prospective parents undergoing fertility treatments, the process can be both emotionally and financially draining. A single round of in vitro fertilization can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and there’s no guarantee of success.
As Deborah and Jake Anderson-Bialis will tell, your choice of doctor or clinic can make all the difference. The couple started the process of freezing Deborah’s eggs four years ago and wasted months and thousands of dollars on unsuccessful procedures due to miscommunicated instructions. They tried two different clinics and found both to be disorganized.
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Many people are ashamed to talk about failed fertility treatments, but Deborah points out that even when people are willing to share their experience with a specific doctor or clinic, their perspective often isn’t applicable if the diagnosis is different or they underwent a different procedure. “I was getting a lot of phone calls from friends and friends of friends asking me about my experience,” she says. “But I really had nothing in common with the people calling me. I’m a sample size of one person.”
That frustration gave birth to FertilityIQ.com, a website that collects detailed survey data from fertility patients to help prospective parents find the right fertility doctor or clinic for their needs.
The couple used data they collected for the site to identify a third doctor they liked. Just before starting IVF, Deborah learned she was pregnant. In February, they launched the site, and in April, they welcomed their son, Lazar.
If you’re open to traveling for fertility treatments, global hospital search engine Archimedicx.com uses artificial intelligence to help you compare providers for elective procedures, both in the U.S. and abroad. The patient search engine currently offers information on artificial insemination as well as non-fertility-related procedures.
Maria Burpee, senior vice president of special projects at Archimedicx, says the search engine plans to focus more on fertility options like IVF and surrogacy in the future. The site’s algorithm considers factors like positive outcome and activity volume. For instance, Burpee says if you’re living in New York and want to travel to California for a procedure, the site can help you identify hospitals and show how many of that procedure each performs per year. Users can also view information on cost (in most states, you’ll be paying your own way for fertility treatments) and waiting time for an appointment at each hospital.
In addition, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology’s website, SART.org, displays data for fertility clinics across the country, including live birth rates per patient sorted by age range. But as the website says, “accurate and complete reporting of ART success rates is complicated.”
Numbers from any source only tell part of the story. Comparing data from one clinic to another is rarely a true apples-to-apples comparison, cautions Dr. Joshua Berger, a reproductive endocrinologist and medical director of the Los Angeles branch of CHA Fertility Center. “One clinic’s patient base can be quite different from another, which can significantly differentiate the success rates between the two clinics,” he says. “Unfortunately, the odds of fertility treatment success is not the same across women of all ages and situations,” he adds.
Berger adds that “while SART.org features a success rate predictor tool [for IVF], the best way to determine your likelihood of getting pregnant and having a baby is to speak directly to a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist.”
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Choosing a fertility clinic or doctor can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some strategies to help you decide.
Know your needs. Before contacting any doctors or clinics, Barbara Collura, president and CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, recommends that you assess your needs, whether they are cultural or religious sensitivity, scheduling flexibility or financing options. “Oftentimes patients are … afraid to speak up and let a practice or doctor know what’s important to them,” she says.
You may be drawn to a certain clinic because its website describes easy financing options only to discover later that those choices are only available to people with a certain diagnosis or situation. Or a clinic with friendly doctors may not work for you if they can’t accommodate your work schedule. Collura encourages you to tell practices upfront that “‘this is my situation at my job’ or ‘we’ve looked at our finances, and this is what we have available.'” That way, you won’t pay tens of thousands of dollars only to realize later it’s a bad fit and feel stuck because you’ve already paid for treatment.
Consider the source. When talking to other patients, consider what procedures they had and what their diagnosis was. One of the benefits of a site like FertilityIQ is that “you’re able to identify what type of person and what type of patient is talking, so you can find people who are very similar to you,” Jake Anderson-Bialis says. “For example if you have recurrent pregnancy loss, you can read something from a very experienced patient, which might be different from someone who has endometriosis or someone doing egg freezing. That context is critical,” he adds. And according to Berger, blogs can be a good source of emotional support, but don’t believe everything you read.
Pay attention to each interaction. Deborah and Jake Anderson-Bialis say they overlooked some signs of disorganization at their first clinic, so if your gut tells you it’s the wrong clinic or doctor for you, heed that instinct.
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“Many fertility clinics offer free seminars where you can learn about the fertility basics and meet the doctor and staff,” Berger says. “Before you start treatments, it’s good to get a feel for the doctor and staff, see how comfortable you are with them [and] get a sense of whether they provide personalized care or treat you like another number. Every patient has a unique set of circumstances, so it’s important to get that personalized service,” he adds.
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How to Compare Fertility Treatment Options originally appeared on usnews.com
