Peter Uzelac

OK, so I really hate to complain or say anything bad about this clinic because I have a healthy, gorgeous 2 month old son because of them. There were many speedbumps in the process at this clinic and I wrote them all down as they were happening. Most of them would have probably gone unnoticed but since I had been through IVF before, I knew what to look for. Unfortunately that is why I think if you are going to do IVF at this clinic, you need someone in your corner who has gone through it before. 1. I received my medication for the stimulation phase and there was no trigger shot ordered. If that shot is not given at the exact time before retrieval, the cycle will have been a waste. Now I noticed this right away when my order was placed and was able to call the clinic and the nurse ordered it. I am also a nurse so I am knowledgeable about meds and I immediately picked up on it that the med was not there. I am not so sure everyone would have done that. you have enough on your mind doing IVF that you should be able to expect your meds to be ordered correctly. 2. I received a medication that the prescription stated on the bottle to insert vaginally. When I had taken the med previously, it was orally. I called the nurse to confirm and she said, yes it is to be taken orally. So had I not known to question the route of this med, would it have been effective if taken incorrectly? 3. They forgot to do the genetic testing on my embryos before freezing them. I'm not even sure how this happens and I never got a direct answer as to why either. Once the eggs are out and fertilized, you really don't talk to anyone any more (which is another downer). All communication is by email from the embryologist with growth updates and embryo counts. I got my final email with how many made it to the final stage and were frozen, but nowhere did it say that the biopsies were done. The letter simply stated, "9 embryos frozen." I thought the wording was weird so I called the office and the embryologist was gone for the day and I guess the RN staff had no way to check if the biopsies were done, they did confirm that the biopsies were ordered and paid for. The next day the NP called and said the biopsies hadn't been done before freezing the embryos, she didn't know why and she informed me that it shouldn't be a big deal that embryos get thawed and refrozen all the time. I didn't agree with her, and I felt right there that my embryos would probably not survive. I was offered no explanation as to how it was missed/forgotten, just that it wasn't done. I was not offered any apology from the staff or embryologist and I almost wondered if this happens a lot? It was another day or two before the embryos were biopsied and sent out. About a week after the biopsies were sent out, I got a call that blood work needed to be done from myself and my husband that is to accompany the biopsies. So the biopsies were just sitting in another state waiting, because we needed to have blood work done. I asked why no one told us this before and never got a straight answer. I said we don't want to do it, can they just do the biopsies? The answer is no. The system can't run the biopsies without the blood work. So then it was at least another weeks delay til we could both get to the office for the blood test and have it sent across the country to meet the embryos. 4. I went for my lining check prior to the implant and the covering doctor was there that day. He didn't know how to use the ultrasound machine and just guessed/ visualized how thick my uterine lining was. This made me very uncomfortable and I had the clinic tell Dr. Uzelac to call me. He called me later that day, and was very apologetic and I said I would like to come in again tomorrow to have the lining rechecked and that is what we did. The doctor's eyeballing of the depth of my lining was pretty much correct, but that is not the point. The doctors should be able to use the equipment in the office. 4. Lastly was the communication. Like I said before, once the eggs are out, I feel like you become a number. You get email correspondences only from the embryologist and whether that news is good or bad, you're getting it from a computer screen. Obviously if you have questions, you can call, but I really didn't understand how you can't just call someone. Most fertility patients are super fragile and getting bad news from a screen probably doesn't sit well with most people.

Once they called in the prescription to the wrong pharmacy and I was already at Walgreens. I called the Clinic and they immediately called it into the Walgreens.

When I was ordering progesterone there was a bit of a snafu with the pharmacy where they did not have my information. But I think it was probably the pharmacy's fault. The same pharmacy switched me from Gonal F to Follistim and did not inform my clinic so they could modify my instructions.

We had out of state monitoring with another clinic in KC that would then send our results to Marin Fertility, there were a couple instances where the orders for tests seemed to not get to the clinic here in KC or the orders were unclear, we always got it worked out nothing majored resulted from it. I think it had mostly to do with it being out of state monitoring along with a 2 hour time difference, i.e. orders weren't sent before a certain time and/or calls weren't made at correct times.