RMA of New York

I'd say that my overall experience with RMA - Brooklyn was mixed. I had a solid experience with Dr. Lekovich, but I had some issues with the finance office and very limited contact with nursing staff, other than the doctor's assistant (nurse/PA). Pros are obviously the endocrinologists and their expertise, and the nurses who care. Cons are a seeming lack of transparency and miscommunication in the clinic's billing practices. My experience in terms of scheduling and communication of test results was fine, if routine. The 2 individuals from RMA (nurses, I believe) who called me to communicate my results and to schedule the next visit sounded very indifferent and possibly even impatient. However, it was RMA's handling of billing that really sunk this experience. As mentioned earlier, RMA was an in-network provider for me. I received separate bills through my insurance - for each clinic visit, the lab tests, and for the genetic testing (Sema4). Everything was fine, except for the genetic testing, which my insurer had deemed "experimental" and so covered exactly 0%. Insurance subsequently billed me over $11K for this sole claim, which seemed outrageious. I communicated this to my finance coordinator, Caitlyn Barilla, and she said that it should be covered by insurance and requested a Letter of medical necessity to this end. I followed up with Aetna (insurance) and it would be > 2 weeks before they received this letter. Eventually, I got in contact with the genetic testing provider directly, via phone and email over the course of 3 months, and they explained that it isn't usually covered by insurance but that pursuant to an agreement they have with RMA, I should have received the contracted rate of $250, and not billed the full rate. I was finally able to resolve this issue in June/July 2021 by paying the provider directly.

We chose the clinic because of it's strong reputation, location, and because they take our insurance - GHI. The doctors and nurses have been amazing and the location in downtown Brooklyn is ideal. We've also had great experiences with all of our procedures - IUIs, egg retrievals - at the Madison Ave location. We did one IUI in Soho that was also great. On the other hand, for routine matters, the coordinating staff and finance staff are lacking. It might be also a factor of our insurance being shitty but we've had a terrible time coordinating pre-authorizations. My husband and I end up spending hours on the phone with the pharmacy, insurance for the first few days of each cycle. It was extremely stressful for both of us and probably impacted the results of our cycles.

I like and recommend RMA. I appreciate the flexibility in monitoring hours and locations and I liked that I got a chance to meet most of the doctors there since you never know who you'll get on procedure days. Most doctors have great bedside manner and a few seem too busy for questions but I don't blame them, monitoring mornings get busy.

Lots of locations, usually not a bad wait for monitoring. The clinic is big so you don’t get any hand holding. Do your own research or be prepared to assert yourself quite a bit to understand treatment protocols.

Reproductive Medicine Associates (RMA) is one of the best fertility clinics in the world. Dr. Lekovich's guidelines of treatment was based on the tremendous research and knowledge the clinic has on fertility treatment. They also have a lot of offices in New York, so you can do the monitoring portion at a place closer to where you live. The clinic is very thorough about your treatment.

The clinic sees many people through the day, sometimes making for a full waiting room. However, the staff are rather quick to see everyone, provide a calming environment to sit and wait, and have never waited for longer than 15 minutes for monitoring.

RMA is a large clinic that serves a ton of clients in NYC. They don't have a patient portal and emails are very quickly deleted from their secure server. Overall, we liked Weill Cornell much better, but switched due to insurance. The admin staff at RMA is subpar, although I believe the doctors are highly skilled and trained. As long as you're aware of their administrative short comings, you can still have success there, but you may have to do a lot of leg work. It all really depends on who you are assigned to for patient coordination. We really liked Dr. Lekovich though and would work with her again.

The clinic treats a lot of women-mostly because they take a great amount of health insurance plans-which is excellent. While there are so many people present for monitoring and appointments, I feel very taken care of when I am the patient in the chair being seen. All of my questions have been answered and all staff, doctors and nurses have all been helpful, supportive and empathic during the process.

The Brooklyn office is warm, faster, and generally smaller - making it a more ideal location. The main office on Madision Ave of RMA is a giant cog machine that routes people through as numbers not faces and it is a factory.

RMA is run efficiently . There are several locations in Manhattan , Brooklyn and Westchester so it’s convenient for people in various locations in the city . However the monitoring hours should be a bit more flexible . The strict monitoring hours makes it difficult to rearrange your schedule depending on the type of job you have .

When you enter RMA , the clinic seems to be run like a well oiled machine . Everyone is seen efficiently and that’s wonderful when you are in a rush to go to work at then end of your appointment. However with that being said , it feels like a factory with a lack of compassion from the doctors responsible for your care . Return callls from the nurses take place within a few hours or by the end of the day . There are so many doctors on staff so getting in touch with your doctor may be difficult . My wish would be for a direct line to your doctor’s officers prevent going through the message answering protocol .

Strengths are efficiency. I was VERY surprised for NYC and how busy they were that I never waited more than 10-15 minutes in the waiting room, a lot better than my OB's office ! Also they were very friendly. The nurses called back very quickly and were good about getting any questions I had answered. I also liked that I had a way to communicate with Dr. Kudesia over email. I found that very personal. The weaknesses were that it has a feeling of being a business and that they almost hope you have to jump to IVF. In our case we do have to jump to IVF because of my age and my husbands sperm motility, and I just wished from day one they would have made him get tested.

Having now gone to another practice, I see that RMA is a fertility factory. In retrospect, I feel that we didn't truly receive any personalized treatment. There is a standard set of tools that RMA uses without going deep on what the underlying issue might be. After 2 failed IVF cycles based on getting no PGC testing embryos, a panel of the RMA doctors didn't have any other suggestions beyond a different IVF protocol. They are not open to day 3 transfers. Since transferring to a different practice, we've done secondary tests for genetics, a biopsy identifying an infection, sperm fragmentation test and uncovered issues with each of these. These tests just were not available at RMA. We now think of RMA as a place to go to have certain procedures administered to you, but I don't think about it as a place where your doctor can truly "treat" you by offering individualized care and service.

Strengths: friendly and calm staff Weakness: It took a while for the RMA Urologist's Nurse to call me back with my husbands test results of why we were not conceiving. It could have been because my husband was their contact and not me, but we sorted that out and I got in touch with the urology team. *Urologist is Natan Bar-Chama

The second (and successful) clinic I went to was Madison Women's Health on the UES. They are AMAZING. They are exactly what anyone would want -- individualized attention, specific nurses helping & calling everyday, great attention to detail, great bedside manner. I felt so confident and happy with this clinic.

Finance team was not great. Wish I had been guided a bit more through my payment options since insurance did not cover treatment. Nurses and staff were all very friendly. Loved the nurses who drew my blood at clinic- so sweet!

This clinic has great doctors and nursing staff. The facilities are also great and the pricing comparable to other places. The area of needed growth is in the coordinator team. They are often unavailable or appear to be frustrated with you anytime you have questions for them.

This clinic is at a decent location. There are a lot of patients that are seen here. Because of the volume of patients it is important that you keep track of all of your information etc. Following up is usually necessary because sometimes it fall through the cracks.

The NEW Brooklyn office is beautiful and so spread out. Especially during this time it’s easy to socially distance, clean, and feel comfortable. All the rooms they take you to are big also. Love it there and highly recommend it to anyone.

Strengths: It's a smoothly run, large operation with lots of experience and data. Weaknesses: The size can make it feel like a factory.

The clinic is brand new, they just moved to that location. They now provide way more services on site instead of having to go to other RMA facilities for procedures such as egg retrieval or egg transfer.

The office is in a good location and the hours are convenient. They are also open on weekends. The office is pretty clean. The waiting time is not too long. It is easy to schedule an appointment. The staff is very nice and helpful.

strengths: clean, well-established, responsive. weaknesses: sometimes during monitoring hours, it can feel very factor farm like with all the women waiting.

Modern offices, always rannon time. They had very good hours for monitoring which fit in well with work. They weren’t able to do procedurea in this office ao they were always done at the main offices in Manhattan.