Eric Levens

This all had to do with our first nurse Danielle Kelly. She lost paperwork, ordered wrong doses of medications and sent wrong prescription to pharmacy (that we had done legwork to find I must note because medication was special script), she also seemed to always be out of office. This all contributed to mistakes that were made. I don’t think it was the other staffs fault.

Previous box discussed this conflict.

The only bad experience I had at Shady Grove was being able to get in touch with nursing staff. Results took a while to get; questions took time to answer; and if I wanted to make changes to my protocol, it was difficult to convince the doctor to proceed in a more aggressive or catered fashion.

While overall treatment plans ran smoothly, there were a few instances with room for improvement. The front desk staff didn't always have accurate information on which RE was scheduled to do a particular procedure even a day or two out. As a planner, this kind of information was important to me especially since infertility is a process where patients have so little control over anything. When my RE ordered the use of a dual trigger protocol, I received conflicting instructions from the weekend nursing staff of when the two triggers needed to be done relative to each other and the dosing. Although this got resolved because the day of trigger ultimately fell on a school night, if I were not the type of patient to self-advocate and seek out answers then that cycle may have been jeopardized. For one of my embryo transfers, I did not get notification ahead of the procedure how many embryos survived or their status (e.g., morula, blastocyst, etc.) until we were already in the procedure room. The RE on-call even already prepared paperwork with her plan before indicating to my husband and me what were our options. The RE did end up giving us some time to figure out what to do without pressure but I would have appreciated being informed the morning of about the status and grades of my embryos so that could be in a better place to make a clear-headed decision. Further, calls to inform of bad news were on a few instances saved until the end of the day or even after hours. While one has to admire the fact that my RE wanted to give difficult news himself so as to be available to provide better guidance than the nursing team, the wait was excruciating and unnecessary. A better approach would have been for a nurse or even the front desk can do an initial call or even send an email to say that the RE will call to discuss the results. Lastly, the financial department is very much hit or miss so incorrect information was provided on a few instances. For instance, I was told that PGS testing was covered for at least the biopsy; however, this ended up being denied about 9 months later by insurance. In another instance, I was given the green light to start an IVF cycle despite the fact that the financial department could not confirm whether my insurance had enough to the max coverage sum to fund another IVF cycle. Instead, I had to piece together this mystery myself and then pull out of stimming upon having started the cycle because--to the best of my understanding after many, many calls to all responsible entities--insufficient insurance coverage funds remained. Although it has been over a year, this situation still unsettles me greatly as this could have cost me the opportunity to have another child. In speaking with others, discrepancies of various kinds with SG's financial department are not a rare occurrence.

I've explained in earlier sections

I've already shared several things above; however, here are a few more things that made the process stressful: Wrong information. For example: My nurse left a voicemail telling me to start my birth control pills. I have Factor V Leiden's which makes me more susceptible to blood clots and I should never take birth control. She called later with the correct information but instances like that can make you feel like just another number. The medications coordinator called the pharmacies with the wrong insurance information so I had to call the pharmacies myself and figure out what was/wasn't covered and what the price difference was. She also left some of my prescriptions off the email to the pharmacy. Luckily I was able to spot the error and correct her list. All of this may sound simple, but when all of this is new to you and you're paying someone to do the leg work for you but don't feel like you can trust them, it can be very stressful. I could list more but you get the idea. While there are many positive things I could say about the program, if someone asked me about my experience, I would say, "It could have been less stressful." It's hard to be so vulnerable, financially and emotionally, and feel like that investment isn't appreciated.

My husbands sample / slide was broken in transport. This was during our pre treatment testing/diagnosis. As the office transports them to an outside location for testing. It was handled extremely professionally, with many appologies, and no defensiveness. We received multiple phone calls from varying people apologizing & asking how they could make it easiest for us to re submit the sample. We understood that accidents happen & my husband had to repeat the sample. It my opinion, they could not have handled the situation any better than they did.

FedEx somehow broke the vials of my blood in transit. I had to re-do the bloodwork

A nurse from a different shady grove gave me incorrect information on how many embryos we froze. My first nurse at Annandale could Not seem to fax anything to other providers.

During one of my IUI cycles I got conflicting information from my ultrasounds. one day I was told my follicles were a certain size and we were ready to trigger, and the next day the follicles were actually smaller and there was question over whether or not I'd already ovulated. this was attributed to user error on the part of the ultrasound technician, but it was a little stressful.