Susan Willman

She seems very competent. She is very good at explaining things in detail. She is thorough. She is very focused on genetic testing. I felt like she is slightly overly cautious. I tested as a carrier for a very rare genetic condition and I didn't want to pay to have my sperm donor tested for it because I was comfortable with the very small risk; she was a bit heavy handed in trying to talk me into doing further genetic testing. Similarly, she wanted to do an HSG test for blocked tubes right out of the gate, whereas other fertility doctors with which I consulted suggested doing 3 rounds of IUI before jumping to HSG. So, she likes tests. I think she knows what she is doing. Her bedside manner is mostly matter of fact, but she is not cold. She is nice.

Let her know if you don't want all of the tests she is recommending. For example, I told her I wanted to try 3 rounds of IUI before getting an HSG test, and she was okay with that plan. I just had to be assertive about it.

My nurse is great. Very warm, likeable, and communicative.

The office environment is great, clean and well decorated. Everyone on the staff is very nice. They are mostly pretty well organized, although they could improve at that sometimes. For example, one time, one of the nurses gave me a blood test, and then the other one called me later and recommended that I get the same blood test, not realizing that I'd already had it done that morning at the clinic. But for the most part, they are on top of things.

IUI $880 per cycle (including untra-sound monitoring)

For straightforward cases, I expect Dr. Willman could be great. But in my experience, as soon as anything deviated from the norm, it all started to fall apart. She's well-respected in the Bay Area and that's got to be for a reason, but I now doubt her medical opinion based on feedback from two other REs on her protocol. For example, she told me that blastocycsts from a rescue ICSI are no less likely to be viable than from regular ICSI or just IVF. She also told me that breastfeeding would have no effect on my IVF cycle. I have spoken to other doctors who feel the opposite on both those counts. She also tends to get defensive when challenged on some of the calls she's made, which while understandable, doesn't sit right with me. Despite some major setbacks, I did get pregnant and gave birth to my kid, though trying for #2 with this doctor was a complete failure.

Trust your gut.

For the most part, I liked Dr. Willman's "bedside manner." She was matter of fact without being cold, and went into the medical details in a way that I appreciated. In terms of her treatment plans, however, I do feel that she relies on numbers and statistics with less outside-the-box intuitive thinking, which means her treatment plans are somewhat less tailored to each individual. In my case she weighed lab results more than my medical history, so prescribed a medication protocol that looked good "on paper" but didn't take into account that I had tried something similar in the past with a poor outcome.

My first IVF cycle was an antagonist protocol and canceled for a lead follicle. My 2nd cycle was a Lupron microdose flare protocol and ultimately did lead to a pregnancy and live birth. However, we were advised to use ICSI, agreed and paid for it, and then it was not done. We had an almost total fertilization failure--out of 15 eggs only 2 fertilized. Dr. Willman said that since the sperm had looked good, she decided against ICSI. We were livid and upset. The lab did "rescue ICSI" at this point, which ultimately led to 1 frozen blastocyst. I have heard since that rescue ICSI almost never works and that the blasts that result from it are almost always nonviable. Indeed, the FET cycle we did with that blast was a failure. For our last cycle, in an attempt to conceive a 2nd child, Dr. Willman prescribed another antagonist cycle despite the fact that in the past that had led to a canceled cycle for me. It was coupled with estrogen priming, FSH and Menopur. She also prescribed human growth hormone, but not beginning till stim day 5. In speaking with other doctors, the HGH should be started far earlier in the cycle. I had poor response to the drugs and my estrogen never reached above 900, even with 12 follicles. My estrogen dipped on the day of trigger. I asked Dr. Willman if we should cancel the cycle and she recommended going ahead to retrieval because this might be as good as I would be able to get. They got 7 mature eggs. Four fertilized, and only 1 made it to day 3. On day 6 it was deemed poor quality and not frozen or transferred. I really wish we had canceled the cycle. Now she recommends donor eggs.

I had no complaints about the nursing staff or case manager. I felt well-taken care of.

I think RSC is a great choice if you are in the Bay Area. Look at their SART success rates. Definitely read up on which doctor you pick, because there are many and they all have their own styles. The financial department is very unhelpful. If you have insurance coverage for infertility, it is very difficult to understand how much you will actually pay out of pocket until they are asking for a payment. Next to the anguish of a failed cycle, the confusion and frustration I felt when dealing with the financial department was the worst part of going through IVF.

It's far too much effort for me to try to quantify this unfortunately, between insurance coverage, canceled cycles, etc. It's all a blur. As I said previously, the financial and billing aspect of this process was a nightmare and it is here that the clinic has its biggest weakness.

Dr. Willman is a strong believer in the advantages of a healthy singleton pregnancy, and would likely recommend an eSET if the patient were on the younger side, or at any age if the embryos were normal as determined by genetic testing.

I felt like I was on an assembly line. I went (and stayed) because of the SART stats but ultimately decided they were way too cavalier about our ability to keep financing treatment without a major reassessment of what may have been going on.

Be prepared to deal with nurses, techs, and all of the other doctors there almost exclusively, Willman will be your doctor only in the sense that is the primary doctor assigned to your case; she will not be making all of the treatment decisions or handling the procedures.

We only saw Dr Willman occasionally to review our case (we were a "case") and a few times for baseline or sonograms. Otherwise I had an assigned case manager who couldn't answer questions (would only repeat information we already had) and had to be pressed to ask the doctors to get new information, communication was always at least one day behind, billing was a complete mess (we ended up with a refund because of over-payments?!). IUIs, egg retrieval, and fresh transfers were never with Dr Willman always someone else who was on call. She didn't always really think through how to communicate Before our one and only IVF transfer as the embryos were developing, she left me a voicemail late on a Friday afternoon to say she wanted to tell us something, didn't say what it was, and then left for the day. Of course we freaked out and managed to get the on call doctor on the phone who gave us the bad news that the embryos weren't doing great. Finally, after all of that, Dr. Willman let me know our fresh transfer failed (second beta results) over voice mail for crying out loud.

IUIs with lertozole, some with bravelle, and some with follistim with menopur. All negative pregnancy tests. IVF with follistim, menopur, and ganirelix. 5 fertilized eggs, 1 day 5 embryo, 1 day 5 morula, both transferred, low chemical pregnancy resulted.

Very slow in responding to questions, at least one day and usually incomplete answers.

Lots of knowledgeable doctors but you won;t have the benefit of being treated by just one of them who will give you personal attention. They go by the stats there, if you don't work within their standard protocols, they are slow to adjust.

It was efficient and impersonal, a different nurse or doctor each time. They were always pleasant though.

IUIs were about $600 plus meds, IVF retrieval and fresh transfer was about $24,000 with no PGS plus meds.

They recommended a fresh transfer of two embryos - a blast and morula.

Dr. Willman is very knowledgeable and personable. She answers questions thoroughly and cites relevant research. I wish she was more available though. She is hard to have contact with outside of appointments and her schedule is very busy. Appointment times get bumped and phone calls get pushed back. But when you get her attention, she is very good.

Make a list of questions to ask at your appointment and cover everything you want to cover, because getting a hold of her between appointments is not possible.

When we met face-to-face her attention was very focused, she took her time to answer questions, and responded well to the emotional aspects of the process. Accessing her outside of appointments was near impossible though.

Responsive, available, resourceful, knowledgeable. Always willing to answer my tons of questions. One of the best things about my experience at RSC.

RSC is well known and has a good reputation. As already noted, they are very busy and it is hard to get as much personal attention from your physician as one might like. Many of the details of your care will be handled by nurse case managers. I think the quality of the case managers varies, I happened to get excellent care from mine, but I have heard from other patients who have had very different experiences.

~$15K for IVF egg retrieval plus ~$4K per frozen embryo transfer

She is very knowledgeable about preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) and will suggest adding this to the protocol. She prefers to use this to transfer single embryos.

I feel like I answered this in the first question. She explained everything clearly and set our expectations appropriately. We did get lucky on our first IUI cycle with her, after two miscarriages previous to seeing her, so that was the end of our work with her.

Don't hesitate, just go.

Dr. Willman was great. She explained everything very clearly from the first consult and continued to do so as she outlined diagnosis and treatment paths. She set us up to be realistic about our chances.

The initial round of testing revealed I had a balanced translocation. Her strategy, as I had good results for ovarian reserve and egg quality, was to try three rounds of IUI to hopefully speed up the process of getting pregnant, and if that failed, move to IVF. The first IUI resulted in a healthy baby.

Everyone I interacted with was great. They were on time, friendly, and happy to discuss the specifics of what was going on at all times.

They were great. There were additional locations available for timing or other reasons. They were upfront about costs and had a financing person to review what the costs would be and work with your insurance to get the most possible covered. The whole operation seemed very organized and compassionate.

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Susan Willman is very compassionate with patients. I have also dealt with other Doctors there when they are covering for her and they function the same way. I just wish she could help me achieve my second pregnancy so much easier than the first one.

I would recommend them to ask as many questions as possible.

Doctor Willman is very compassionate with me.

This was in 2010 but the one thing that does stand out is when she recommended icsi.

Prompt communication, compassionate and easy to understand. Very detail oriented.

Billing communications need improvements. Very pricey. Compassionate Doctors but need them to be more aggressive to achieve goal this time around. The first cycle I saw Dr willman more often but this time around, not so much.

The services are pricey and nothing is covered under my insurance. They have a program called Attain where you can try various fresh cycles and you get a certain refund if you don't take a baby home from hospital.

This time in 2018 I did want to transfer not than 2 but it is against their policy. They either transfer 1 or 2.

Please see my earlier comments.

Get a second opinion

I think the practice has really gotten away from Dr Willman. I have to assume that she originally had a more personal approach. Now, you almost never see the doctor - just a rotation of techs. They never take the time to really understand your body, but instead go purely on your numbers. In my case, where all the numbers look good, this meant that Dr Willman was incredibly overly optimistic. After two failed retrievals, she immediately jumped to donor eggs despite the fact I had explicitly said I was not ready to go there on several occasions.

The nurse ("case manager") was horrible. Terrible, inconsistent, and at times inaccurate information. Worse, when I raised my concerns with Dr Willman and asked for a different nurse, she was very reluctant to enable this - despite agreeing that the nurse had made mistakes.

(+) Smart, Experienced, Compassionate, Clear, Thorough (-) Too busy to actually participate in my care, Not creative in dealing with my low chances, seemed like she had given up on me having a baby with my own eggs before i was ready to give up

She's very good, but don't expect to see or hear much from her.

Dr. Willman took time at the beginning to understand my situation. But after that I was turned over to my nurse and didn't have much/any contact with her.