Joseph Sanfilippo

He goes though everything and explains everything that needs to be done, hes never in a rush to get to the next patient and always makes dure we understand evevything. But its not just Dr. Sanfilipo but his entire staff that works together, if we have questions we cab call anytime and get an answer that same day, and we always have lots of questions. If tests need to be completed they always have room for us. The entire staff if so caring and we definitely aren't just a number in the patient world, we are there to help make our dream come true of having a baby and he is there to do everything in his power to make it happen. When we started this process i was diganosed with endometrial hyperplasia with atypia. So I had to go see the oncologist before we could move on with my fertility treatment. After treatment for my precancer and lots of biopsies I got the ok to go back to the fertility treatments but only have 6 months to try. This would be an absolute dream for us to get this grant and make our dreams come true.

Ask questions, they are there to give you the answers your looking for.

The entire staff tgere is so caring, and explains everything in great detail.

The nurses are always going above and beyond for us. When I call with questions they always have the reassuring answer for us.

As a patient I have been extremely happy with everything about this facility, not only did he find my precancer but treated it and I'm now on my way to fertility treatments.

We recieved a paper with all the costs the day we went in for our fertility treatment, everything was very clear, yet, very expensive.

He answers all of your questions honestly and without judgement. He is always willing to explain his thought process behind his choice of treatment. He's shown compassion when I've shown signs of pain during a procedure.

Don't be afraid to ask him anything and everything.

When I would meet with him, he always had a good handle of my diagnosis and never confused me with other patients. He never seemed rushed to leave and move on to his next appointment. He is always willing to listen and answer all of my questions.

I'm 29 with diminished ovarian reserve as a result of multiple surgeries to remove ovarian cysts. We started with IUI since I was still young, but Sanfilippo made it clear he thought IVF would be our best bet. The IUIs failed.I was told to be cautiously optimistic once it was time for IVF. He chose a protocol designed for poor responders, but it didn't work. My cycle was canceled due to low response. Next, I was told that my chances of success with a second IVF were less than 10%, but he understood I was still young so he would be willing to try again if I wanted to. He said it was time to start thinking about donor eggs as the alternative. I ended up deciding to use donor eggs and we are in this process right now.

My care coordinators were always very accessible and available to answer my questions via email or phone.

Strengths- they treat a lot of patients with complex diagnoses. They are honest about success rates and available options. They are willing to let you take lead on treatment if you really feel strongly. Weaknesses- communicationing with your doctor directly is very limited. They treat a lot of patients so beyond your care coordinator, most staff may not remember you.

A single IVF cycle was around $12,000 plus medication. Donor IVF was $16,000 plus medication.

Dr. Sanfilippo was a great doctor who was unfortunately surrounded a poor support staff. Dr. Sanfilippo made sure to give details about your procedure and had a good bedside manner. We unfortunately had a lot of bad experiences at UPMC, but Dr. Sanfilippo was the only reason we kept going back. If Dr. Sanfilippo was at any other clinic, we wouldn't hesitate to see him again.

Dr. Sanfilippo listens to your concerns and will put you on a path that is specific to your needs. He did listen when we told him that we had been doing fertility treatments for years and just wanted to go straight into IVF without having to do anymore IUIs or medication cycles. He took into account all of our prior history and agreed that our best course of action was IVF. The only negative I have to say about Dr. Sanfilippo is his support staff is not good or organized which made our experience at the facility negative.

There were so many nurses on staff nobody had any idea who you were even though I was in the clinic all the time. If you wanted to get in contact with a nurse, you had to call the "nurses line" and leave a message and wait for a call back from whichever nurse decided to call. The nurses never knew who you were, so if you don't keep detailed notes on your cycle, medication, ultrasounds, etc., the probability of the nurses knowing where you are in your cycle is slim.

Dr. Sanfilippo suggested IVF with menopur and follistem injections. I was monitored with ultrasounds and bloodwork. The support staff (nurses) didn't perform an ultrasound and kept using an old one to determine future protocols. Once I realized what was going on, I brought it to their attention and they immediately got me in for a "fresh" ultrasound to monitor.

There were a ton of nurses on the nursing staff that made it difficult to ever see the same nurse twice. In my experience, the nursing staff was very unorganized and sometimes wouldn't even look at your chart before they spoke to you.

The clinic is clean and capable of providing adequate care. Our experience there is not a good one. During our IVF, we had 31 eggs retrieved, 20 were mature and only 1 fertilized. The clinic didn't perform ICSI and at the time I had no idea what that was. I didn't fee like they were very aggressive in their approach.

My husband and I had a ton of bloodwork done and the cost was really high. The IVF was very expensive, but probably around the same as the national average.

Dr. Sanfilippo was willing to do a multiple embryo transfer, however I only had one embryo to transfer.

Dr. Sanfilippo was extremely thorough in explaining every step of the process for IUI's and IVF. He may have been a little more clinical in how he handled things but he always had our best interest in mind. He would also take into consideration our thoughts or requests during each cycle. When we found that we were receiving conflicting information from the time of our appointments to the time the nurses would call us with protocols my husband and I were ready to change doctors. When Dr. Sanfilippo found out about this he called me directly to address my concerns and we did not have a problem after that.

Going into the appointment, know that he is very detailed in clinical terms.

It was more with the nurses not being on the same page as Dr. S.. When this would happen I would get conflicting information which then made me feel like my specific case was not being taken into consideration. From this, I felt like I was receiving generic treatment.

For the first IVF cycle we went with the lowest dose of medication which resulted in only 1 embryo that made it to freeze. For the second IVF, Dr. Sanfilippo increased the medication which resulted in 6 frozen embryos that made it to freeze. Unfortunately I do not remember the amounts of each medication.

Initially, the biggest problem we ran into was that we were not receiving the protocol for what we had discussed with the doctors. After that was addressed we did not run into any problems and each cycle was run extremely well without issue.

The clinic in general runs really well. As long as you are prepared for what can be a long road, the staff can become like a second family to you. After being with this clinic for awhile you get very spoiled in the fact that you get all your blood work on site as well as calls back each day with results. All retrievals and transfers are done in the same office as well which is nice because you work with the same faces that you have become familiar with. The only thing that was frustrating at times is that if you need to call the nurse line for a quick question, you have to leave a message and wait for a call back every time.

Before insurance each ultrasound was around $500. Medications for an IVF cycle were around $4,000 before insurance. A total IVF cycle with medications, retrieval, transfer is around $14,000 - $15,000 before insurance. Frozen embryo storage is around $500 per year.

Great experience with Dr Sanfillipo. He shows compassion and takes his time explaining everything. He explains things in ways for someone not in the medical field can understand, which I've found some doctors have difficulty doing. He took his time and listened to all of my questions and concerns. I never felt like I was asking a dumb question. Yes, our first round was not successful but had nothing to do with him. My body did not respond the way we were hoping. We liked him so much we are sticking with him for round two.

Don't be afraid to ask questions if you don't understand. He will take the time to explain everything.

Dr S took his time to explain every detail of our diagnosis and our best options. He was not in a rush to get out of the door. He was there to answer all questions and was very compassionate towards us

Be prepared to leave messages with every phone call. It's better to leave detailed messages so they can have answers for you when they return the call.

Medications were 4K IVF was 12k My insurance does not cover fertility treatments.

I liked that he was honest, but did not like that my multiple miscarriages could not be explained as all my tests came back normal. Eventually, only after going through IVF treatment did we discover that the issue was Luteau Phase Defect and that the solution was simply to inject myself during the first trimester of pregnancy with progesterone. It was a lot of heartache to reach this conclusion, but ultimately I am now a mother of 1 and 9 months pregnant with my second. Both naturally conceived and maintained by injecting progesterone during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.

Leave no stone unturned, the simplest of solutions could be overlooked by the providers as they tend to focus so much on the more complicated factors.

Depending on the fellow assisting Dr. Sanfelippo I felt more like a human. However, the entire proves was very much impersonal.

There is a large nursing staff used by a number of doctors. They tend to get to know the pacients and as they do they warm up to us, but it takes a while.

The clinic is located at Magee. It is clean and easy to access.

The costs are expensive, but luckily my insurance covered most of it.

He has good bedside manner and did treat us with much respect. I feel like he didn’t look into much more than it’s just unexplained infertility. After my Ivf failed and I miscarried the response was it was just bad luck we should try again. But we simply couldn’t afford it.

The nurses were rude and not very compassionate.

The clinic does have an acupuncturist who is amazing and a great help to have on this journey. Appointments are typically early and there isn’t much wait times for lab draws and ultrasounds. The front desk staff can be rather rude.

Around 15k for Ivf and 2500 for each iui