Richmond Center for Fertility

The clinic is the most stressful part of the whole process. I had several appointments cancelled at the last minute. It’s hard enough taking off from work and then having to reschedule to the next day. It was also nearly impossible to reach a person at times. The phones would keep ringing or go to voicemail. I had the office manager’s direct number and that helped immensely! There is now a direct line to the IVF nurse.

We had a very important appointment scheduled to confirm a heartbeat after a previous loss. At the last minute, our appointment was cancelled and rescheduled to the following day. I told the office I couldn’t emotionally wait another day and would wait all afternoon if needed, or see another doctor. Dr Shah then drove across town from a medical emergency to see us because he knew how important it was to us. We are definitely people to him and he is rooting for us just as badly as we are.

Valerie was very helpful with guiding us through IVF. The other nurses were compassionate. Sometimes the voicemails left were vague and it would be hard to reach her or any nurse, ending up in phone tag.

Dr. Shah is my favorite doctor ever! Aside from God, he is the reason we have a family now and our lives are filled with brightness. He has excellent bedside manner and explains each step of the process. He was accessible 24/7 with any emergent questions or needs. Our road to parenthood was hard and he guided us with his expertise, compassion, and honesty through every step of the way. He was spot on with his percentages and helped us to make the best decisions necessary for our unique needs. I’ve recommended Dr. Shah to everyone I’ve met who is going through infertility. You will be in good hands under his care.

Listen to all of your options, ask about odds/percentages, and trust in his recommendations. Following two losses, he knew with certainty that our child was among our remaining embryos. It was hard to believe in that due to the loss, but he was right.

Endometrial patch was used to beef up my lining prior to my successful transfer. Progesterone injections caused painful side effects and he let me switch to injections ever third day, suppositories every day. Baby aspirin daily. Heparin or Lovenox for first and second trimesters.

We did a shared risk program. With ICSI and using our own eggs/sperm, it was $22,000 + medications. For three transfers, including meds it was around $30k.

Dr. Shah educated us on all of the complications, financial and medical, related to having multiples. He did not pressure me to transfer more than one embryo at a time. On our third transfer, he did offer to transfer two embryos but respected our decision to use only one.

The clinic seemed like an average, "fine" clinic. I have no complaints regarding the clinic, but also had no experiences there that led me to believe it was anything special. It was clean and new feeling, and I had absolutely no issues with it. Having not spent much time in clinics, maybe this does actually make it special.

Dr. Shah was very understanding and empathetic during the process. He gave me the responsibility of passing information along to my wife, and kept me involved in the process heavily.

The nursing staff was very nice in person and made us feel comfortable while in the office, but seemed to forget where we were in the process or lose track of where we were when we called in. There were no mistakes made that affected the procedure (to our knowledge, at least) but it is disconcerting to call in and talk to someone who does not seem as organized as you had hoped - especially when considering the cost of the services.

Dr. Shah is an excellent doctor who gives the appropriate level of detail to make treatment explanations thorough but also understandable for non-doctors. In addition, he clearly has an evidenced-based ideology which I personally agree with. Facts - and not emotions or impulses - are what drives his decisions. While even he admitted that there were steps that ended up not working during our cycle, I do believe that he gave us the best possible chance for success.

Dr. Shah is an excellent doctor and trustworthy person. The main drawbacks remain his office staff service.

The costs were high but normal for the procedure.

I would rate this clinic as a 10 out of 10. The lobby is warm and inviting, easy to find. The receptionist keeps your information private and wait time has always been top notch. The only weakness I would speak of would be to maybe try doing follow up calls to the patient once a procedure is over such as follow up 15 days after the IUI to see how the patient is doing to see if the next menstraul cycle has began or any positive pregnancy results. You kind of have to call them if you need to know what the next step would be.

Good bedside manner, very busy practice. Feel a little rushed or that I have to ask questions to really know what to expect.

June is a good communicator. She calls to inform me of medications prescribed and calls them into my pharmacy. She handles my ultrasound appts as well.

Dr. Shah lets you know that you are not alone and assures that pregnancy is an option. He has explained the best case scenario for our situation and he makes sure his staff stays on top of scheduling and ultrasound appts.

If I had to give one piece of advice, I would let someone know that Dr. Shah is personable and you can trust him.

Thus far, Dr. Shah recommended my husband have labs done to make sure he was healthy. He stated that we can't blame the infertility entirely on the female. With that being said, my husband found out he was diabetic, and also has low sperm count. He is currently being treated by a urologist and endocrinologist. He has also had surgery. Dr. Shah suggested for me to be treated for PCOS and recommended a healthy diet. He has recommended me to take Femara for ovulation and be monitored for IUI cycles.

My insurance covers my IUI, ultrasounds and medications except injectable meds. My husband has to pay out of pocket for his wash.

I have not done IVF.

They are quite organized and throughough overall. I truly don’t have a single complaint. I do think they are perhaps more expensive than most clinics as they are the only one in town really. They relocated the clinic in 2016, so it’s completely new and modern . Never met a nurse or admin that I didn’t like. One Saturday, over a Holiday , there was only one doctor on call and one nurse so it was quite hectic and we had to wait two hours for our IUI, but that was the only quasi negative experience.

Although Dr. Tidey is not a man of too many words, he will spend all the time in the world with you to answer your questions. He is very gentle and skilled during the procedures. He listens very well and does not have a hurried or arrogant attitude.

Kim Beasley, Dr. Tidey’s nurse is an absolute dream!!! She made the entire experience so wonderful and warm. I don’t think I have ever met such a compassionate and skilled nurse. None of my IM shots ever hurt when she did them! She was always so kind and sweet and showed so much sincerity with my failed cycles. I just love her!

At first I didn’t know what to think because Dr. Tidey is never in hurry and explains everything quite slowly, while being very dry. But as we got to know him we quite appreciated his ways and always felt very confident in his care. He has got to be one of the most gentle doctors I have seen. He did forget about about some things a few times, like getting additional blood work, but all in all I trusted him fully. He takes the time to explain whatever you need. He is not a talkative doctor unless you ask him things, so come prepared and don’t be afraid to ask!

Ask questions as Dr. Tidey is not one to go into detail unless you ask.

Unexplained . Three IUI’s 2x clomid with Gonal F 1x Letrozole with Gonal F

$1200 for IUI $27k for guarantee IVF (under 39 up to 6 cycles ) + meds , each cycle.

The front office staff, particularly Susan, are somewhat disorganized and you need to stay on top of them to make sure things get done. Joan, the financial worker, is great and very helpful with going over options for payment. She will work with you on payment deadlines and is very understanding.

Most of the time Dr. Tidey was very thorough, but his bedside manner wasn't the best and he sometimes forgot what we had talked about at previous appointments.

The whole nursing staff was great and were always available if I had questions.

Because my IVF cycle was successful, I can't be too upset with the care of Dr. Tidey. He made it clear from the beginning that the goal was to get me pregnant since we had been trying for 18 months. However, he never performed any kind of testing on us, he simply diagnosed us with unexplained infertility and said we needed to do IUI or IVF if we wanted to get pregnant. Part of me can't help but wonder if he only did that because those treatments are so much more expensive and I wonder if we could have figured out what the actual problem was if we had done any testing.

Ask lots of questions and do research before each visit! Write down your questions so you don't forget to ask. He tends to not get into details unless you ask about them so if you want to really know what's going on, you have to ask and know what to ask.

For my IVF cycle, he put me on a lower dose of injectables to avoid hyperstimulation. He said that since I am "young", he felt I would respond well to the medicine and didn't want to overstimulate. He also recommended we do ICSI even though my husband's sperm were not an issue. He said that since we were "unexplained," we don't know if fertilization is the issue and he would hate for me to have no eggs fertilize. He recommended we only transfer one embryo even though we wanted to do two because we were doing a fresh transfer. He said that success rates are actually slightly better when you do a frozen transfer so he'd hate for us to use 2 embryos on the fresh transfer and if it didn't work, we'd only have 4 left. We are so glad we only did 1 because it did work and I think we would have twins right now if we'd done 2, which I can't imagine!

IUI with injectables and Clomid - about $800 IVF with ICSI (without PGS testing) - about $1700

See previous question

So far, I've been happy(my husband as well) with our experience. The office staff is polite, answers questions(with the exception of a few nurses), and is willing to answer all your questions patiently without rushing you. While it's certainly not expected, I've noticed everyone remembers your name!

Dr Shah sat patiently with us while explaining our options, allowed us to process the information and ask questions before proceeding. We have had an ongoing dialogue from day one that never felt rushed or inadequate.

I am a nurse and hold my fellow colleagues to a high standard. I felt that at times, I was brushed off and have expressed this with the office manager.

I very much have enjoyed working with Dr Shah and while we need to move onto IVF, we plan on staying with Dr Shah through that process. He is open mined, willingly to share professional studies(I'm a nurse and really wanted to know this info) and has always been available for questions or concerns.

Make a list of all your questions prior to your visit in order to maximize the conversation.

This was our 3rd IUI with the practice(the first two were with Dr Tidey-who was fine, I just wanted a fresh set of eyes for round 3). We mutually decided that after round 3 of IUI we would move onto IVF. We are currently preparing for that now with a start date hopefully between now or spring 2019

For each round of IUI(we did both meds and shots) it was roughly $2-3,000

we haven't gotten to this discussion yet

The clinic is unorganized, I do not think I have ever had an appointment that wasn't moved at the last minute (nearly every single appointment was rescheduled even during a cycle). They are all individually quite good at what they do, but the collective effort is extremely poor and unorganized. There are serious order of operations/organization issues.

The clinic is extremely unorganized as a whole, which at times make you feel like a number vs. a human. Overall, they all individually have the right intentions, but the collective effort tends to be very unorganized and the patients feel that the most.

The nursing staff is extremely unorganized and impossible to get a hold of, it's not their fault, the clinic hasn't figured out a process for patient's that makes sense. They are overburdened and inaccessible.

Dr. Shah is very good at what he does, the only setback is how unorganized the clinic is run. If we are only rating Dr. Shah individually and not looking at the entire process, then I think he deserves a high rating. He is very much an expert in his field and also compassionate, the only issue is they are all veryunorganized and this sometimes makes the patient feel as though Dr. Shah isn't quite "on top of things" with the process.

Be assertive and don't always "trust the process" as the clinic makes mistakes (forget to order meds, lose chart, call you with other patient's info) that you have to point out to them pretty frequently . . .

Around 15,000

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For a weakness, it's kind of a small practice so you will be in the waiting room forever. On the positive side of being a small practice , the doctors and nurses will get to know you and vice versa so that it doesn't necessarily feel like doctor's visits each time. You also always see the same doctor every time which I think is a plus.

Dr.Shah was very easy to talk to and always positive. He explained everything I was going through and answered all questions as needed.

There were only 2 that I met. They are both kind women but one is more personable than the other. Although, they are both helpful if you need anything or have questions.

Don't be nervous! He is a very kind man and is willing to work with you and help you understand your course of treatment.

I would get an ultrasound at cd3 for every cycle when on injections. Pills -- I got an ultrasound the first round on cd3 to check my lining. Every other round, I'd just pick up the pills and get an ultrasound on cd10. If my body wasn't producing any follicles at cd10 then we would up my dosage of whatever treatment I'm on and come back around cd12-cd16. Most every time I had one or two follicles. The last cycle I did, I had too many follicles mature so we had to cancel it.

It really depends on your insurance so it's hard to say what other people will be paying. Each cycle I took pills, I paid $1. For injections, I paid $24 per injection pen. Each cycle I also needed a trigger shot and that was an additional, $20.

The only weakness was the my leftover embryos were frozen with a slow freeze process which has caused issues with thawing them and decreased the quality. However, I believe they now use vitrification which is much better.

Dr. Tidey always consulted with us after every visit. He was very straightforward but listened to our ideas.

Compassionate, caring and always willing to answer your questions. It was always possible to speak to someone or receive a call back shortly. I never had to wait a long time for results.

Dr. Tidey was amazing. He was always trying to work out a good course of action for us. He did a consult after every single appointment and never made us feel badly about questions. I always felt like everyone in the office cared about me and treated me amazing.

Write down all of your questions. He will take the time to answer them.

We did four donor egg cycles. They were natural cycles so I was only on estrogen and then progesterone during the cycles. He did monitoring ultrasounds throughout the process to ensure the lining was building. At one point, I had to do an estrogen patch as well.

We spent a lot. 38,000 for donor egg ivf. However, we did the shared risk program so we got six fresh cycles. Because of miscarriages, we had to use two fresh and two frozen cycles.

The clinic is very pretty, clean and comfortable. Dr. Shah's office is spacious and it is nice to sit at eye level with the doctor. The lab is conveniently right underneath. We have not had any negative experiences so far.

I feel like I was treated more like a human than a number with Dr. Shah by his honesty and his personal time he spend after working hours.

The nursing staff has welcomed me but not any different than any other general office visit. There was one negative experience where a nurse didn't know how to use the scale to weigh me which is a sensitive subject for me as most people are towards their weight however I am not positive if this was an actual nurse or someone else helping out.

My experience with Dr. Shah has been great so far! He tries to get to know his patients on a deeper level than just their medical journey. He has great communication skills and is quick to respond. He is encouraging and does not sugar coat anything. I have not had a negative experience yet!

To listen to him and believe that he is making the right decision for you.

They have a money back guarantee program but it costs more than single cycle around $30,000 including medications and genetic testing.

The clinic just merged with another in richmond and they now have double the doctors. New facilities are wonderful and all the doctor’s are great. The lab and place they do the procedures is in the same building and just downstairs, so it’s super convenient.

He’s very caring, explains things well and has a great bedside manner. He called me to check on me multiple times

They are always caring, answer questions, and available to talk via phone.

This far, I see no weaknesses. We did not achieve the result we wanted due to egg problems. He’s a great doctor — very caring, answers all my questions, and calls to check up on me after procedures and when we get results back.

Know all your risks, do your own research and be prepared to ask questions— he’ll answer everything thoroughly.

We did ivf because we had a special morphology problem. We were advised of the chances of success due to age. We did a retrieval and ended up with 5 embryos, which when tested were all genetically abnormal. We did a second round with the same results. Advice now is to do donor eggs.

Ivf multicye- $18000 initial payment. Once all meds and other fees were paid- approx $28000

Really nice facility, and very clean. Comfortable waiting room. Very rarely had to wait long to see my doctor. Sometimes hard with getting phone calls returned or paperwork filled out (for things like short term disability after my surgeries).

Dr. Shah was so compassionate and always made me feel informed.

We had a lot of obstacles to overcome, but I always felt like I could trust him to be honest with me, even with hard news. I had to uterus surgeries done by Dr. Shah and he put me at ease and treated me with respect. Our IUIs were not successful, but Dr. Shah didn't give us false hope - he was honest with us that they would likely not result in a pregnancy. That honesty helped us with the process, because we could keep our expectations realistic. When we finally conceived after our second embryo transfer, Dr. Shah and his staff were genuinely happy for us.

Be ready for a difficult journey - but trust that he will guide you through it.

Costs were high. The lab used for IVF was not covered by our insurance, even though Dr. Shah was in-network.

Dr. Shah explained that he likes to start with single embryo transfers first, especially when genetic testing was performed, as a pregnancy with multiples could lead to a higher risk for complications.

Everyone is very friendly. Hard to get an appointment in the near future as a new patient, but worth the wait. All doctors are kind, intelligent, and patient, which is important as you may need to see whoever is on call if it is on a weekend.

Always made sure my questions were answered. Also greeted me by name. Always asked about anything abnormal/discomfort after treatments.

Fantastic. Always greeted me by name and asked how I was doing, both as it related to fertility treatments and life in general.

Clearly very intelligent and answered all questions. Didn't mind breaking complicated medical answers down into language I understood. Very trustworthy. Only saw another doctor when days fell on weekends and had to visit on call doctor. Made sure I was always comfortable and knew about procedures/medicines I was taking, etc. Only reason I stopped seeing this doctor is because we decided to take another path towards building a family. Overall great experience.

Ask lots of questions.