Brenda Houmard

I was seeing her partner the first round and he moved away and I was transferred to her service. I was nervous at first because I loved her partner as a doctor and hadn’t met her yet. The moment I met her my husband and I knew she was amazing and we were so thrilled to be her patients! She is so smart and so kind she really helped us through our journey. She cares about her patients and it shows. I wouldn’t want another doctor now I am so happy with my care from her!

I would recommend her and let them know they will be treated with the utmost respect and feel as though they’re her only patient because of the care she gives you.

She is very kind and she explains things to you so you can understand them. She holds your hand through it all and is extremely knowledgeable as well as personable.

I have PCOS and my first round with a different doctor a lot of my eggs weren’t fully matured they were smaller so Dr Houmard chose to have a longer protocol for me and she waited until the exact time to have the best quality eggs. It got pushed back a couple times because she wanted them to grow a little bit longer which was great. I was on an antagonist protocol. My medicines were menopur, gonal-f, oral estrace, endometrin.

My nurse is beyond exceptional. She actually stepped back and isn’t in charge of patients as much now but I consider her a huge part of my life and am so thankful for her. The entire nursing staff is amazing. They all know you and care to. They cheer you on and help with any problem or question you may have. They are kind and amazing at their jobs.

They have a patient portal which is so amazing, if you have a small question you just send it through the portal for a response. Your results are also on your portal and easy to access. They have extra meds available in case your protocol is extended, which mine was into a weekend and they gave me meds so I didn’t have to try and order. They call promptly, the doctor calls you herself at times as well as your main nurse. They are very organized and clean and it’s an amazing environment.

They have an option to buy with an outside program called Attain. I chose to do this because I did the buy 3 refund option where if I don’t bring a baby home I am refunded all of my money, for $27,500. Also medication each round varies from 1,000-4,000.

We don’t see Dr. Houmard every time we have an appointment but when do she is very knowledgeable and takes the time to answer our questions. She oversees each cycle and adjusts things as needed each time. We do see her for follow ups every few months and so far I am happy with our decision to use her as our doctor.

Don’t except to see her with every single visit.

Dr. Houmard and her entire staff are very friendly and personable. They treat us like we are their only patients every time we are in the office!

After she diagnosed me with PCOS, the first thing she wanted to do was to make sure I ovulated because I hadn’t had a period in 6 six months at that point. She started me on a med that I can’t remember the name of but it gets you to start your period. I haven’t had to take this med again since then because my body has started on its own. Then she has me take 10mg of Letrozole for five days and then a couple days later in my cycle I give myself an 150 of GonalF that is suppose to trigger your follicles to grow. I usually will go in around cycle day 15 for an ultrasound to see if there are a follicle that is at the right size for for the next injection called Ovidrel which triggers your bony to ovulate. This is also all in conjunction with times intercourse. Three of my cycles we also did an IUI. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get pregnant yet but I can tell that my body is working correctly now and that gives me hope that it will happen eventually.

They are wonderful, friendly, kind, and compassionate. I couldn’t ask for a better office to be a patient at.

Strengths would be that they don’t treat you like a number and they genuinely care, and we never usually have a long wait when we go in. Weakness would be that there are a lot of people (nurses, assistants, nurse practitioner) that are involved in your care.

Our insurance actually covered a lot more of our coats then I expected but it’s not cheap by any means. Ultrasounds I believe are about $100-200 give or take but only about $20 out of pocket. Meds (not including injections) are less then a dollar out of pocket. Injections are not covered by our insurance but the pharmacy they come from give us a discount because we go to SRM. They are still about $160 for both the GonalF and Ovidrel. Semen analysis is only about $40 out of pocket. IUIs are not covered for us and we’re about $700 each. We are currently saving up for IVF that will be about $18,000 but will also be applying to finance about half of it.

I think she is a compassionate doctor. She tried to help our very severe infertility problems. However, she did more harm than good, because she refused to vary her protocol which was not working for us, didn't draw labs to check things during treatment and also proceeded forward with ivf stims without baseline labs or ultrasounds. All things that caused us to waste money on unsuccessful treatment. We attempted 6 mini IVF cycles and only made it to retrieval on the 6th one. One egg was retrieved, but was found to be overmature. There was no labwork done to check my E2 levels, or my LH levels, so it was a very risky thing to proceed to retrieval at that point. Unfortunately as the patient at that point in time I did not know that those were routine things done at most practices to prevent poor outcomes. Perhaps if you are doing standard IVF or IUI with her, your treatment outcome might be better, but I do not recommend for those with more difficult problems to overcome. They lower the price of mini IVF, but don't actually do enough monitoring to make you successful.

Don't do mini IVF with her.

Dr. Houmard was empathetic throughout treatment until the last cycle. She was clear that due to diminished ovarian reserve treatment options with own egg might be limited. She was willing to treat us though she never offered to vary from one protocol. She also a few times gave extremely devastating information either via email, or over the phone without offering any followup.

Mini IVF- No baseline ultrasound or labs. Letrazole 5mg CD 3-7, Follistim 150 units CD 6-8. Start Ganirelix CD 8. No labs checked, ultrasound CD 9. Zero labs checked prior to retrieval. Ultrasound to measure follicle size only. Birth control pills for cycle batching (also bad for DOR). Results = all dismal.

The nursing care at the clinic was amazing. Very organized, always available. Very helpful in trying to explain the physician's rational if there was something I didn't understand.

The clinic is very new and clean. They only have an embryologist part of the month so must do batching for IVF. Appointments are easy to get. Billing is a nightmare and extortionistic. I had to call 7 times to get an itemized bill. They held on to $13,000 for several months and it took weeks to get a refund. When I was transitioning from a patient to a monitoring patient, despite the fact that I had been a patient there for 2 years they wanted to charge me "to set me up as a tech patient" plus charge for sending results to my new doctor. I was told "they have to make money somehow".

Mini IVF cycle was $13,600, ultrasounds $330 unless you are a tech patient then they are $400.

N/A

Dr. Houmard is so caring and compassionate. She is honest and straight forward. I feel like I can trust her 100%. She understands how stressful infertility is and doesn't belittle the feelings that I have.

Go see her immediately lol

She is so compassionate and honest and caring and straight forward. I feel very well cared for.

I am on the antagonist protocol due to my good AMH level and we are male factor

I really appreciate my nurse Sara. The only downside is that she is now my third nurse. I feel that shows a lack of continuity.

I feel like all the staff is very caring and kind. Highly professional. Each of the people I have to interact with have given me their direct line so I don't have to go through the operator. I can call whenever I need to and often times they answer the phone right away. If I send a message through the portal, I can count on them to answer promptly as well.

I feel like the costs have been the same as or less than most other clinics.

She said based on my age and health that we can choose to transfer 1 to 2 with a goal of a singleton pregnancy.

A great experience. She explained the procedure and recommendations. She made time to answer all our questions. She wanted to make sure we knew the risks but also the benefits. We will go back to her to do multiple frozen transfers.

Be open and clear on your expectations. If you have questions or concerns vocalize them. Brenda will take the time to clearly answer your questions.

She was sincere and really took the time to answer all our questions and teach us about the entire process.

All wonderful. Again took the time to listen to our questions and then explain clearly their answers. Knew our names and case.

We never waited more than 5 minutes at anytime. Clinic was clean and comfortable. Good location.

Drugs ($500) and initial testing ($200) were largely covered by insurance. IVF appointments, retrieval, and transfer were not covered ($13,000)

We were strongly encouraged to just do a single transfer due to my wife's age and overall health. If we wanted to do multiple Brenda was willing to, but wanted to be clear on the risks. We opted just to do one, and it was the right decision.

Friendly and knowledgeable.

Don't give up on the dream

I had already done several iui attempts with local gyn that included letrozole, clomid and trigger hcg shots to no avail, so when I got to Dr. Houmard I was ready for IVF. Did birth control to suppress then several meds to stimulate them retrieval then 3 day transfer, only one egg turned into transferrable embryo. But it worked and had a great pregnancy and healthy boy.

Far away, 3 hour drive for me.

5000 for meds, 24000 for the package I bought which was through attain and if I wasn't successful I would have gotten 50% back, two IVF cycles and endless transfers.