We were living abroad when we went through the treatment with Dr. Chung. He makes an effort to go over the procedure and results with us either over the phone or in person when we were in NY. However, he does seem to be in a rush all the time...We did 3 retrievals with him, each time it failed to yield a PGTA normal embryo...we asked him multiple times to consider doing something different to improve the results but he refused.
[Weill Cornell has] a lot of patients cycle through so it's not as personal as a private clinic. Don't expect to see your doctor on every monitoring appointment. He / she may not do your retrieval or transfer. each doctor only does retrieval one day a week...The nurse had a hard time figure out how to coordinate with us because we were living overseas and did the first few days of monitoring outside of country. I would like to note the genetic counsel who communicated the final results to us was horrible. she had zero compassion and knowledge.
How was your experience with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Dr. Pak Chung takes very straight and narrow approach to IVF , a process that has a lot variability. We did 3 retrievals with him, each time it failed to yield a PGTA normal embryo from a total of 14 highly rated day 5 embryos. Throughout the process, we asked him multiple times to consider doing something different to improve the results but he refused. We are now under the care of CCRM, the doctor there was very surprised by Dr. Chung's approach to stick with the same protocol after seeing the same results in 3 rounds. I think Dr. Chung's approach may work with 75% of the patients but if you have a tough/ unique case and requires the doctor to think out of box, you should not go to Dr. Chung. He sticks with the same general protocol. Being a part of an academic organization, the doctors there are super conservative. They would not go out of their way to help the patient.
What's one piece of advice would you give a prospective patient of Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
If you have a tough case and his protocol didn't work for the first time, I would think very hard about staying with him. Get a second opinion.
Be prepared with questions when you meet with him. He can be very intimidating sometimes but you need to be your own advocate.
During treatment, were you treated like a number or a human with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
We were living abroad when we went through the treatment with Dr. Chung. He makes an effort to go over the procedure and results with us either over the phone or in person when we were in NY. However, he does seem to be in a rush all the time so better get your questions prepared ahead of time.
Describe the protocols Pak Chung used in your cycles at Weill Cornell Medical College and their degree of success.
I am a good responder to stim so he used the same protocol for all three rounds: 225 gonal F/ 150 Menopur then added grlx use 5000 IU HCG trigger
Describe your experience with the nursing staff at Weill Cornell Medical College.
The nurse had a hard time figure out how to coordinate with us because we were living overseas and did the first few days of monitoring outside of country.
I would like to note the genetic counsel who communicated the final results to us was horrible. she had zero compassion and knowledge. her name was Ann Carlson. She didn't know how to explain our results and completely dismissed our results because they were abnormal. She would make these conclusions about the embryos without any data and told us it's based on her gut feeling. I am floored with how unprofessional she was. You should definitely request a different genetic counselor if you go to Cornell. She added so much stress to our process. We deserve better.
Describe your experience with Weill Cornell Medical College.
Go to Cornell for their lab - we got much better fertilization rate; They have a lot of patients cycle through so it's not as personal as a private clinic. Don't expect to see your doctor on every monitoring appointment. He / she may not do your retrieval or transfer. each doctor only does retrieval one day a week.
Describe your experience with your monitoring appointments at Weill Cornell Medical College.
cattle call but efficient.
Describe the costs associated with your care under Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College.
mine was mostly covered by my insurance. Don't recall the exact cost
Describe Pak Chung's approach to eSET (elective single embryo transfer) vs. multiple embryo transfer at Weill Cornell Medical College.
I think Cornell does up to 2 for day 5 and 3-4 for day 3 (not 100% sure)
What specific things went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Failed to call with results
Failed to convey critical information
Describe the specific things that went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Please see my note about the genetic counselor above. My recommendation is request a different one if you get assigned to Ann Carlson.
Dr. Chung is competent and confident, but very, very conservative. Despite being a DOR patient, I was repeatedly suppressed with hormonal birth control, which led to very poor response. Estrogen priming, a standard protocol for those with DOR, was never even mentioned (I had to switch clinics to even find out it existed). Last we heard from him, he was pushing us toward donor eggs...
Surly receptionists. Unavailable nurses — and forget ever contacting the doctor. Long, long wait times, even when we arrived at like 6 AM on a weekday. No one [at Weill Cornell Medical College] ever bothers to learn your name or even glance at your chart before seeing you, so you get traumatized by mangled versions of your diagnoses. After retrieval, nurses loudly announce how many eggs they got out of your body as you're still woozy from anesthetic, so a DOR patient like me got to hear that the woman next to her had 20 eggs retrieved.
How was your experience with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Dr. Chung is competent and confident, but very, very conservative. Despite being a DOR patient, I was repeatedly suppressed with hormonal birth control, which led to very poor response. Estrogen priming, a standard protocol for those with DOR, was never even mentioned (I had to switch clinics to even find out it existed). Last we heard from him, he was pushing us toward donor eggs.
What's one piece of advice would you give a prospective patient of Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Don't go to him if you have DOR.
During treatment, were you treated like a number or a human with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Dr. Chung was very nice at first, but how he treated us in visits was inversely proportional to our ability to pay. While we still had savings, he treated us courteously (though was often rushed or late — an hour late on average for each appointment). However, after our savings ran out and it became clear we were in dire financial straits, he stopped responding to calls and ultimately ghosted us after a failed transfer.
Describe the protocols Pak Chung used in your cycles at Weill Cornell Medical College and their degree of success.
We did the most standard protocol with the highest doses of all medications (Gonal-F and Menopur), over and over again. Once we did a "low-and-slow" Lupron protocol, with poor results. Triggered with HCG each time. Had between a month to two months of hormonal suppression each time because of high day-3 FSH, which led to very poor response. The one time we got decent results was when we got lucky enough to have a low FSH and therefore a natural start, but Dr. Chung seemed very impatient and pushed us not to wait for these possible natural starts but instead to suppress, suppress, suppress. Because he spent much time talking about how Weill Cornell is "the best," we didn't question his decision-making and spent $50k of our own money on treatment. We ended up with 1 PGS/PGD-normal embryo from 5 IVF attempts (one canceled for poor response), and after we transferred it and the transfer failed, Dr. Chung never called us again. We tried to get in touch with him and he never called us back. At that point, we switched clinics.
Describe your experience with the nursing staff at Weill Cornell Medical College.
With the exception of one nurse (whom I will not name here), the nurses ranged from indifferent to utterly incompetent. The most generous way of seeing things, I think, is that they have far too many patients for the number of nurses WC chooses to have on staff, and the result is that basically nothing works. You can never get in touch with the doctor (can leave messages with his assistants but he never once called us back in two years of treatment); but also, it's impossible to get in touch with the nurses. They issue instructions that are unclear; they don't communicate by email, so if you miss their call (for instance, because you're at work), you're SOL. They do things like forget to renew pre-authorizations for drugs or not communicate with the pharmacy, so nine times out of ten we started our cycle with a stressful phone relay to get our drugs to us. When we were first getting diagnosed — a traumatic time due to the severity of my conditions — their intermittent and unclear communication greatly heightened the horror of what we were finding out. The lack of consistency from one time to the next, the long wait times, the inability to ever speak to a specific person more than once, except by chance, all compounded the impression of a cold and disorganized practice. If you are vulnerable or have a difficult diagnosis, if you're not rich enough to command the doctor's attention, or if you need repeated attempts and lots of patience to get a success, steer clear of this place!
Describe your experience with Weill Cornell Medical College.
Surly receptionists. Unavailable nurses — and forget ever contacting the doctor. Long, long wait times, even when we arrived at like 6 AM on a weekday. No one ever bothers to learn your name or even glance at your chart before seeing you, so you get traumatized by mangled versions of your diagnoses. After retrieval, nurses loudly announce how many eggs they got out of your body as you're still woozy from anesthetic, so a DOR patient like me got to hear that the woman next to her had 20 eggs retrieved. Horrible billing department that sent our bills to collections over and over again — even after we had written notification from WC that we were on a payment plan; even after we told them we were out of town for the holidays and couldn't check our mail (returned to 15 collections notices that time!); even after we wrote to the Dean of the Medical College in a last-ditch attempt to get the harassment to stop. After exhausting our entire savings and our $10k of insurance coverage for IVF, we applied for a hardship program WC offers and received the rudest, most ignorant, least compassionate treatment yet from robotic administrators who demanded to see our entire tax record without ever specifying who would be looking at it or how decisions about what constitutes "hardship" are made. Then, we were offered a "payment plan" that took none of our actual financial data into account and would not have been feasible if we wanted to eat or pay rent. We switched clinics mainly because Dr. Chung ghosted us after our transfer failed, but the horrors we experienced at the hands of billing also deserve mention.
Describe your experience with your monitoring appointments at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Absolutely ruined our schedule. Long waits no matter how early we showed up. Super rude and surly receptionists who acted like we were garbage.
Describe the costs associated with your care under Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College.
I described this in detail in a different section, but all I can say is, this was perhaps the most horrifying aspect of our care — and I am someone with severe and uncommon fertility problems manifesting on multiple fronts. There is no excuse for how Weill Cornell treats patients in this respect. To add to what I wrote above, we once asked someone over the phone how we make the letters from collections agencies stop, and they said "just disregard them" and then actually laughed at us.
Describe Pak Chung's approach to eSET (elective single embryo transfer) vs. multiple embryo transfer at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dr. Chung did not seem to have a clear policy on eSET vs. multiple transfer (at least not when it came to our case).
What specific things went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Failed to call in prescriptions to pharmacy
Lost paperwork
Failed to call with results
Failed to send your chart to another clinic
Failed to inform you of changes in protocol
Provided conflicting information
Failed to convey critical information
Failed to consider drug intolerance
Describe the specific things that went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College.
-We had 2 transfers at the clinic, both failed. After the first pregnancy test, no one bothered to call us with results, so we had to call ourselves. A random doctor called to tell us it was negative. After the second transfer, which had been built up by doctors at the Tribeca and UES clinics as a "sure thing" — we'd been discussing in minute detail how to coordinate early prenatal visits, etc. — we got a phone message that the beta was negative and then nothing at all. No call from any nurse, nothing from our doctor (even after we called his assistant). Just empty space in response to our grief.
-Our pre-authorization for certain drugs lapsed without anyone telling us so; we found out only when we went to order more drugs for an upcoming cycle, at which point it became a huge headache to get things ordered and delivered in time
-Prescribing things in wrong amounts, at the wrong time, forgetting to call in prescriptions altogether; basically, unless we called them over and over and over again, and left angry messages, nothing ever got done
-Repeatedly sending bills to collections even after notifying us in writing that we could pay in pieces; we received countless letters and several harassing phone calls as a result
-Demanding to see our tax information only to propose a "payment plan" we couldn't afford
Dr. Chung provided a good overview of the different levels of med protocols that the Cornell reproductive program utilizes (there are five different levels). He also explained that the 3 key ingredients for success are egg, sperm, and uterus. When my first IVF cycle that led to a transfer failed, he explained that it was a matter of luck. He remained optimistic and encouraged us to keep trying. He said that it's a matter of finding a good egg. From my perspective, my experience at Cornell would have been more optimal had I been able to see Dr. Chung all throughout monitoring, retrievals and transfers. Also, my very first IVF cycle was canceled because the eggs did not respond to the injectibles. I have since consulted with three other REs who stated they would not have recommended that particular protocol for my situation. But I do understand that it is generally a matter of trial and error and that each woman can respond differently to med protocols.
Hundreds of women come for monitoring and appointments every day [to Cornell]. Dr. Chung did his best to explain things but it is difficult to spend more than 15 minutes with a patient. It is also difficult to call or email and get a response directly from your specific doctor. After 4pm or 5pm there is an answering service. A message is sent to the attending on call for that particular evening and you get a call back about an hour or two later.
How was your experience with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Dr. Chung provided a good overview of the different levels of med protocols that the Cornell reproductive program utilizes (there are five different levels). He also explained that the 3 key ingredients for success are egg, sperm, and uterus. When my first IVF cycle that led to a transfer failed, he explained that it was a matter of luck. He remained optimistic and encouraged us to keep trying. He said that it's a matter of finding a good egg.
From my perspective, my experience at Cornell would have been more optimal had I been able to see Dr. Chung all throughout monitoring, retrievals and transfers. Also, my very first IVF cycle was canceled because the eggs did not respond to the injectibles. I have since consulted with three other REs who stated they would not have recommended that particular protocol for my situation. But I do understand that it is generally a matter of trial and error and that each woman can respond differently to med protocols.
What's one piece of advice would you give a prospective patient of Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Be your own health advocate and ask detailed questions.
During treatment, were you treated like a number or a human with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Hundreds of women come for monitoring and appointments every day. Dr. Chung did his best to explain things but it is difficult to spend more than 15 minutes with a patient. It is also difficult to call or email and get a response directly from your specific doctor. After 4pm or 5pm there is an answering service. A message is sent to the attending on call for that particular evening and you get a call back about an hour or two later.
Describe the protocols Pak Chung used in your cycles at Weill Cornell Medical College and their degree of success.
Cycle #1 - Micro-dose Lupron 2x daily 20units = 40 units daily until trigger
Result - canceled after 10 days because no response
Cycle #2 - Estrogen priming with patch commencing one week after ovulation; Gonal F 300u and Menopur 150u daily; Cetrotide
Result - three eggs, 2 retrieved, 1 fertilized, D3 transfer; 8 cell no fragmentation; BFN
Cycle #3 - same protocol as cycle #2
Result - 4 eggs, 4 retrieved, 1 immature, 2 fertilized, D3 transfer; 8 and 6 cell; BFN
Describe your experience with your nurse at Weill Cornell Medical College. (Assigned nurse: Juliana Shen and Christine Lu)
My primary nurses were responsive and compassionate.
With regard to the nursing staff, because of the hundreds of patients, occasionally there will be a prescription mishap (forget to call pharmacy or call the wrong pharmacy) or provided with wrong instructions (instructed to come back next day for monitoring and blood work when you were just there that morning and follicles are still small).
Describe your experience with Weill Cornell Medical College.
Cornell has good success rates, skilled physicians, and good labs.
However, the high volume of patients serves as a barrier to quality individual time with your RE. You will see different RE's throughout monitoring, retrieval, and transfer.
Describe your experience with your monitoring appointments at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Yes, it is a cattle call with hundreds of women waiting for blood draws and ultrasound. There were a handful of times I waited an hour to get my blood drawn. Once I waited over an hour and had to leave to get to work. I did not have blood drawn or tested that day and no one seemed to noticed I missed it.
Describe the costs associated with your care under Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College.
IVF $10,500
ICSI $2,630
Describe Pak Chung's approach to eSET (elective single embryo transfer) vs. multiple embryo transfer at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Cornell recommended 3-4 eggs for my age group.
What specific things went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Failed to call in prescriptions to pharmacy
Failed to call with results
Failed to order appropriate test
Provided conflicting information
Describe the specific things that went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College.
My prescription had not been called in and it was after their office hours so left a message with the answering service and waited an hour at the pharmacy.
A nurse left a voicemail on a Sunday evening instructing me to go back for monitoring the next morning. I had to leave a message with answering service and attendant on call called me back an hour later. Attendant confirmed I did not have to go back for monitoring the next morning.
Dr Chung was extremely compassionate and had a good bedside manner. However, I only saw him 2x during my entire cycle and had a very difficult time getting a hold of him. Many times I had to wait over an hour for blood work and ultrasound only to be seen by a doctor I have never met... I hardly ever saw Dr Chung during my visits and could never get a hold of him to ask questions...If you have to go through Cornell, Dr Chung is one of the better choices but don't expect to see him often
I waited upwards of 2 hrs per visit for ultrasound and bloodwork [at Cornell]...Nurses were hard to get a hold of, sometimes 2-3 days to return a call. Could be very rude at times, likely due to the volume of women they saw daily...Weakness: Factory Feeling: Daily monitoring took a long time, waiting with 100+ other women, hard to get a hold of staff, etc...Many times I had to wait over an hour for blood work and ultrasound only to be seen by a doctor I have never met.
How was your experience with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Dr Chung was extremely compassionate and had a good bedside manner. However, I only saw him 2x during my entire cycle and had a very difficult time getting a hold of him. Many times I had to wait over an hour for blood work and ultrasound only to be seen by a doctor I have never met. The protocol he recommended was one that I had already done, which hadn't worked previously and didn't work with him. After changing clinics I saw better results elsewhere.
What's one piece of advice would you give a prospective patient of Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
If you have to go through Cornell, Dr Chung is one of the better choices but don't expect to see him often
During treatment, were you treated like a number or a human with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
I waited upwards of 2 hrs per visit for ultrasound and bloodwork, I hardly ever saw Dr Chung during my visits and could never get a hold of him to ask questions.
Describe the protocols Pak Chung used in your cycles at Weill Cornell Medical College and their degree of success.
Estrogen Patch Prime. Clomid + 150 Menopure and 150 Follistim.
Describe your experience with your nurse at Weill Cornell Medical College. (Assigned nurse: Christine Lu)
Nurses were hard to get a hold of, sometimes 2-3 days to return a call. Could be very rude at times, likely due to the volume of women they saw daily.
Describe your experience with Weill Cornell Medical College.
Weakness: Factory Feeling: Daily monitoring took a long time, waiting with 100+ other women, hard to get a hold of staff, etc.
Describe the costs associated with your care under Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College.
About $12k for a full round
What specific things went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Dr Chung provided mediocre service and was dismissive about my concerns. He has no interest in reviewing my past ivf results. Resulted in poor quality embryos. Very dissaponted since my expectations were set high...No attention to the specific details of my case. Very dismissive...Willing to transfer multiple
I believe the new patient [at Weill Cornell Medical College] should be aware that they will have to advocate for themselves and really do own background research . I relied on the doctor and failed miserably . Doctor also seemed rushed and I was just a number...[nursing staff] Very disorganized but communicated what needed to be communicated
How was your experience with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Dr Chung provided mediocre service and was dismissive about my concerns. He has no interest in reviewing my past ivf results. Resulted in poor quality embryos. Very dissaponted since my expectations were set high.
What's one piece of advice would you give a prospective patient of Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
Do your own research and advocate for yourself
During treatment, were you treated like a number or a human with Pak Chung at Weill Cornell Medical College?
No attention to the specific details of my case. Very dismissive
Describe your experience with the nursing staff at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Very disorganized but communicated what needed to be communicated
Describe your experience with Weill Cornell Medical College.
I believe the new patient should be aware that they will have to advocate for themselves and really do own background research . I relied on the doctor and failed miserably . Doctor also seemed rushed and I was just a number
Describe Pak Chung's approach to eSET (elective single embryo transfer) vs. multiple embryo transfer at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Willing to transfer multiple
What specific things went wrong at Weill Cornell Medical College?