Erin Masaba

- Strong was closed for a full week in January (for "winter break") which delayed the start of my treatment by several weeks. - Strong was closed again for a full week less than two months later for "spring break". Luckily for me it did not impact my treatment. I'm sure others weren't so lucky. I own a retail business in a time sensitive industry and the thought of closing for an entire week is laughable. - Egg retrievals are not done on Saturday or Sunday. This severely limits flexibility as a day or two can be the difference between more or less eggs being retrieved. Also, if you have any issues with your trigger shot (as I did), and your retrieval is scheduled for a Friday, you cannot simply reschedule your procedure since the office is closed. I had to cancel my cycle. - When my trigger shot failed, I was told by the nurse to "hope for the best" and continue with the retrieval. No doctor called to discuss my options and the office was closed at that point. After doing research online, I realized that the chance of retrieving any eggs with a trigger failure was basically zero. I had to contact the on-call doctor, who wouldn't really give me any advice either way. When my husband and I decided to cancel and convert to IUI so we could get our money back, he said "You definitely made the right choice". I would have appreciated the straight talk up front so we didn't have to do our own research. - My medication script was written incorrectly twice. In the first case, I came up short on one medication and had too much of another. As a result, I had to overnight meds last minute and had a stockpile of the other leftover. Luckily I needed them in a later stimulation, otherwise I would have been out thousands of dollars. Had I not seen the mistake the second time around, that number would have doubled. - The clinic gave me a difficult time about ordering meds overseas as they felt it was unsafe. I understand the concern, but after doing probably 20-30 hours of research on my own, I found that it was both legal and safe. Many clinics actually recommend ordering overseas to their patients. I understand their concern for safety and liability, but I would have expected them to be more knowledgable on this subject. They kept citing a single patient who had a bad round. It was very hard to get scripts printed and I got pushback. Ultimately I ordered overseas and saved over $8000 on medications for my multiple retrievals. The cycle where 100% of the meds I used were ordered overseas resulted in the most eggs collected and fertilized out of the 3 cycles I've done. I am now pregnant using overseas meds. - The embryologists at Strong do not grade your embryos. I received no number and letter grading. During my call to followup on my frozen embryos, I was told one was "healthy" and had been frozen, but the other was "unhealthy" and discarded. When I called my doctor to discuss, she said they don't give grades. I don't know anyone who has gone through IVF and not received embryo grades. UPDATE: As of September 2018 this seems to have changed. - Calls are typically made once the office is closed. If you miss any information or have any questions, it's too late to call back in 90% of cases. - The nurses line is unreliable at best. I'm not sure I've ever received a call back when I've left a message. For example, I contracted an infection during my first IUI, I left a message at 9am saying I had a fever and was in immense pain. Nobody called me back. I called again at 10:30 and left another message. Nothing. Finally I decided to call the "if this is an emergency" extension at lunch. Only then was able to speak to someone. I was seen at 2:30pm, which was great, but it was still quite a while after my initial call. They did treat me in the office with IV antibiotics, which saved me a trip to the ER, but it was concerning that they don't have enough staff to monitor and return calls on the nurses line. - There are a lot of treatment inconsistencies. For example, for my first two stims I was not told to take any supplements. Then on my 3rd stim, there was a handwritten note to take Co-Q10 everyday. Why was I never told this before? - Billing is totally screwed up. The clinic has a different billing system than the hospital and they never match up. I never know what to pay and my balance changes month to month. - Overall I feel that this clinic is understaffed and inconsistent. Their hours are not friendly to the IVF process and certain staff members should likely be replaced. I understand that IVF is a very involved process and managing numerous patients has to be a lot to handle. My recommendation would be to hire more staff to keep things running smoothly, especially considering how much patients are being charged for treatment. UPDATE: More/new staff has been hired as of summer 2018 and things have been running more smoothly in my opinion.

I had issues with my previous doctor, Dr. Alur Gupta, she did not read my chart and was not up to date on where I was in my cycles for my appointments. She failed to listen to my concerns, take my concerns seriously, listen to what I wanted or respect my wishes.

I have had results not told to me in what I consider a timely manner (but I think my standards a bit high). I've had to request drugs be called in multiple times, though some of this was due to my insurance.