IVF clinic quality is so important. How can you spot red flags? How do you choose a fertility clinic? What questions can a lay person ask to begin to understand the quality of an IVF Lab? Quality goes beyond pregnancy success rates to new technologies, inspections and accreditations, staff experience and more!
In the industry, we alway say, START with SART! The federal government requires fertility clinics to report IVF treatment cycle success rates, and you can find those statistics on the SART website. It also has a tool that allows prospective patients to search for fertility clinics by ZIP code, state or region; plus, women can plug in information such as their age, height, weight, and how many prior births they’ve had to predict their chances of success with assisted reproductive technology.
Most IVF programs are proud of their results and may list them on their website, however, whatever they are advertising should match the number of cycles and the outcomes reported to SART or found in the CDC Assisted Reproductive Technology Fertility Clinic Success Rates Report.
One way to determine IVF clinic quality is to look for verified lab accreditation on the CDC report or in the actual facility itself, it will usually be posted in plain site. Find out who the inspecting agency is, the College of American Pathologists? The Joint Commission?
Another possible thing to note is to look at what percentage of their patients are in your age range, or have the same infertility diagnosis as you do.
Consider how the clinic’s staff talk to you, what they say – how professional does the care feel? Use all of your senses. Is the care personalized and professional enough so you feel comfortable?” An example of dehumanizing behavior: some clinics have an application process to decide if you should be treated there.
Failed to call in prescriptions to pharmacy
Lost paperwork
Lost appointments
Failed to call with results
Failed to order appropriate test
Look on Indeed, Glassdoor, or other job sites to get an idea of staff turn over and what staff have to say. The embryologist’s perspective is important! Find out how experienced the providers are, how well-trained they are and how long have they been there? As with other fields of medicine, experience matters in reproductive medicine. Providers should be fellowship-trained and board-certified in the field, both of which are the standard. Also inquire how long the medical providers have been at the facility. If there seems to be high staff turnover, there could be leadership and organizational issues at the clinic.
IVF clinic quality can be influenced by the techniques used. Look for clinics that can offer the latest treatments and protocols. These might include blastocyst transfer, freeze all cycles, mini or low STIM IVF, preimplantation genetic screening of blastocyst stage embryos and single embryo transfer, ERA or endometrial receptivity assay testing.
The introduction of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) resulted in a choice of fertilization methods between conventional in vitro fertilization by insemination (IVF) and fertilization by ICSI. Fertilization by insemination relies on the normal healthy functions of the sperm, and those can be bypassed by injection directly into the oocyte. Severe oligospermia (low sperm concentration), asthenozoospermia (low motility) or teratozoospermia (abnormal morphology) are all good reasons to use ICSI. However, many clinics routinely use 100% ICSI no matter what the diagnosis is. In the case of IVF, unexpected complete fertilization failure (CFF) in an individual cycle is a well-known phenomenon and is a risk to the success of IVF cycles.
A suggestion originated in the early 2000s that the high hormone levels derived from a stimulated IVF cycle would encourage a non-receptive, out-of-phase endometrium. Then, a concept arose that adopting a freeze-all approach would not only minimize the risk of ovarian hyper response syndrome, but maybe even improve pregnancy rates in the general IVF population. Now, the latest clinical “meta-analysis” of fresh vs frozen transfers, (involving 5379 eligible subjects and 11 trials!), found eFET associated with a higher live birth rate only in hyper-responders. There was no outcome difference between fresh and frozen in normal responders, nor in the cumulative live birth rate of the two overall groups. Now, here is where it gets complicated.
The CDC described the increase in the number of elective FET cycles between 2007 and 2016 as ‘dramatic’. They went from zero to more than 60,000 cycles per year. In its summary of US activity for 2016, the CDC seems unequivocal – at least, based on its observational registry data – that rates of pregnancy and live birth are higher after frozen transfers than after fresh. Yet the (published, peer reviewed or randomized clinical trial) so far has not shown a large difference. It seems to be a case where the clinical trials have not caught up with clinical practice. Because there is clear evidence that for hyper responders outcomes are better, many clinics now rely on a freeze all strategy to reduce this detrimental outcome.
IVF clinic quality is not always tied to cost, but it can be. Experts say not to choose your clinic based solely on insurance coverage. Base your decision on the performance of the individual clinic. Clinics that have higher volumes will naturally have embryologists who get to participate in a lot of procedures. Fertilization rates should be above 70% and 40-50% of fertilized eggs should make it to the blastocyst stage.
Weigh the cost of the treatments with the CDC success rates. Good clinics with high success rates may cost more up front but may get you pregnant faster and at a lower cost in the long run instead of paying for multiple treatments.
Consider inquiring about the technologies the clinic uses. Do they use an EMR? Does it have a patient Portal for easy communication? Is there an electronic consenting process? Does the lab have state of the art cryo-storage monitoring systems? Does the lab use “electronic witnessing”? Quality control and assurance are of utmost importance in an IVF lab.
We hope you found this post helpful!
