Isiah Harris

The clinic was good. The front desk staff, the tech who drew my blood, and the nurse practitioner who did my ultrasounds were all friendly and pleasant to deal with. The physical locations I went to, San Mateo and San Ramon, were all clean and nice environments with music playing, candy jars, and wifi in the lobby. The clinic also makes it a point to please avoid bringing one's children to the clinic as that might be sensitive for other patients, which I thought was good practice. The clinic also does a good job of making sure that in the video modules you're required to watch before and during the process, you have a good understanding of the process and know what to expect on the day of retrieval. I also liked the 90 minute injection class I took because it made me feel a lot more prepared to do the injections. In general, communications with the clinic were smooth since they took place over the patient portal and over the phone. After every phone call, Laura or Carla would leave a summary of the call in the portal so I could reference it later. Also, all of the instructions for doing the injections are very clear. Likewise, you can tell that the clinic really has all of the procedures, scheduling, etc. down to a science.

Spring clinic is conveniently located in Redwood City, San Francisco and Oakland. Their clinics are state of the art and have a clean aesthetic with coordinating decor which is welcoming. They are very timely with their appointments. However, Spring does not take time to understand underlying fertility issues and the items they miss could be the reason you aren't conceiving. I can't trust them whole heatedly and they do not treat you like person with the several hoops you need to jump through to talk to the doctors.

Spring clinic is conveniently located in Redwood City, San Francisco and Oakland. Their clinics are state of the art and have a clean aesthetic with coordinating decor which is welcoming. They are very timely with their appointments.

The biggest strength of this clinic is their success rates being a good deal higher than the national average, particularly for women of advanced age or with issues like ovulatory disorders or diminished ovarian reserve. They are very up to date with the latest research and I always felt they were making the best possible clinical decisions for me. Sometimes I got anxious waiting for updates that came a little later than I hoped, but it always eventually came and eventually I learned that a slightly delayed update did not imply bad news.

Overall RSC has been a great clinic. Never any wait for monitoring appointments and well run. Contacting, scheduling, and payments were easy. They only do egg retrievals in the San Ramon office which was an hour long drive on the day of the retrieval but given this is a one-time activity, I didn't mind. The facilities on the clinic during the retrieval procedure felt great. They recently started having an on-site egg storage facility it seems in case you do not want to transport eggs.

Spring puts a great effort into their customer service. Our patient navigator , Lauren, was fantastic - very timely and clear responses, and personable as well as compassionate. Staff was very helpful with medication coordination, even last minute. The facilities are beautiful with nice amenities. I appreciated the ability to do monitoring visits in the clinic closest to our home in SF though we drove to Sunnyvale for Dr. Harris.

At the time I was at Spring the Sunnyvale clinic was very new and there was a lot of turnover with my assigned nurses (not clinic nurses) that was my biggest frustration early in my experience but I imagine that has since worked itself out and as previously mentioned, once I spoke to Dr .Harris and voiced my concerns and frustrations this never happened again. The clinic is beautiful and comfortable, the front desk was always warm and friendly. Another great thing was I had all but one of my appointments with Dr. Harris.

Strengths: Spring is a well-oiled machine. I never waited more than 2 minutes to be seen and everything was extremely organized and thought through ahead of time. Most of my appointments took place at 7am, which worked very well for my schedule. I loved that I didn't have to work through an intense phone tree when I called the main line to speak with someone. Weaknesses: Truthfully, I can't think of any. I had a lot of trouble with the routine blood work during every visit, however this is mainly due to my body not cooperating with me and not the fault of the medical assistants. Ultimately, I went into this experience with someone tepid expectations and Spring blew me away on all fronts.

Spring does a lot of little things that are very nice like letting you email your nurse. They also have a great website with videos about everything including how to do all the shots. They spoiled me with things like they gave me a small box of chocolate when I finished my retrievals. Their clinics are nice and clean and nicely decorated. For me I am near Redwood City so it was not ideal I had to go to SF for weekend appointments and retrieval but it was worth it to me. Since I did have appointments on weekends and on two holidays I ended up seeing some different doctors (Dr. Tran, Dr. Fisher and NP Audrey Krall) but I felt like they very cohesively communicated my case and my instructions with Dr. Harris and my nurse Aubrey Baker. I got a lot of phone calls before and after the retrieval to make sure my questions were answered. They all make up a great team. I think with any clinic you do have to realize that you need to be informed and not expect the nurses or doctors will totally hold your hand on everything. You need to educate yourself about your body, IVF, risks, statistics and options and ask them lots of questions. Keep low/reasonable expectations for everything to minimize bad surprises or disappointment. It is very hard to predict your outcome and the doctors are trying their best but you need to advocate for yourself and raise any concerns. I advise creating a document or notebook for yourself with your plan, your options, your risks, your questions just like you might do for a work project. I recommend therapy or a support group as needed. Part of your plan should be how you will handle all the uncertainty in this process through things like music, art, meditation, friends, movies, time off, baking, etc. It is very hard on your body and your mind.

Strengths: Clean, organized clinic with professional staff and doctors. Very speedy and timely from an operational standpoint which I truly appreciate during the phase where I needed to come in every other day for blood drawn. I also want to mention Priscilla, Spring's Financial Counselor. She has been extremely responsive, thorough and helpful in addressing any finance related problems I ran into. Weaknesses: I would love to have better expectation set from a communication perspective.

Much of results at an IVF clinic rests in the lab and the embryologists, not just the doctors. Spring seems to excel at attracting great doctors and nurses as well as running a finely tuned lab. The lab provided so much more data about the embryo growth and evaluation than we got at our previous clinic. Everything feels state of the art and driven by data, which seems to be reflected in the results they're able to achieve.

Snacks, juice and water once you walk in. The desk is literally steps away from the front and everyone is smiling no what time is it lol (I use to get there early). Whatever time your appointment is, is when you will be seen no extra waiting and if your early you may get lucky and seen then.

Strengths: - great staff - clear communication - transparent - very clean Weaknesses: - they use a surgical center that is out of network for all insurance - some procedures can only be done at the SF office so if you are going to the RWC office expect to have to go downtown occasionally

Prescriptions are given quickly, responsive by email, and clean facilities. Weaknesses include feeling like a number, no assignment to a primary nurse so you work with different people all the time, and no 24 hour on call nurse should something come up after hours or on the weekend.

I feel like everyone is just a number to Kaiser. Maybe it's because they are so large. Don't feel like they care about each person. I don't like how controlling Kaiser is either. I also don't like communication with Kaiser. You can't just call Dr office and schedule a call. You either have to call a generic number and leave a message and hope someone calls you back. Most days they don't and they respond through a secure site that I then can't respond to their message. Very frustrating.

The front office staff is amazing. The team is professional and patient. They swiftly get me checked in and ready for my appointment. Some patients attended the appointment with their baby and the staff would naturally congratulate them, but it stung a little bit. It felt inconsiderate for the staff to celebrate a baby in the wait room around patients who are there because we cannot get pregnant. Maybe the can have blank cards at hand saying: congratulations! Instead of talking about the baby’s arrival in front of patients.

Kaiser is a well oiled machine. For all fertility workup, it's pretty standardized, meaning they do initial blood work, semen analysis, saline sonogram, HSG, and hysteroscopy regardless of diagnosis (I think). I never felt like diagnostic testing was hard to get or was missed. For IUIs, they don't perform them on Sundays, so they'll do it a little early or late if the ideal time was a Sunday. For IVF, it's a full 7 day/week system. They batch patients as the Dr does every ultrasound and you see him at every visit. Unfortunately, that meant a pretty long wait in between cycles. But, that does mean a ton of face time with your dr and consistent scans. They also made you pay to reserve your spot. This meant we paid almost 6 months before cycling (which was a nice break), but now I wish we had gone somewhere else or paid for IVF while still doing IUIs to not have that long break. We ended up switching clinics simply because we couldn't do another 6 month break before cycling again. If we could have cycled more quickly, we would have stayed with Dr. Harris and Kaiser.

The front desk is very personal and warm. The medical assistants can be kind, but often seem stressed. They can sometimes be rude when you call in for information or to make changes to your appointment. They have made me cry. The nurses are knowledgeable. There are many of them at this clinic. You may get a different nurse for each of your appointments. Each nurse has her own style, and so you will have to adjust according to who you have. Dr. Nixon made me very uncomfortable. He talked about his personal life a lot and didn't give me or my husband clear answers. After my initial appointment with him for infertility, I never saw him again. Dr. Harris has been very kind, knowledgeable, and thorough. He has a warm bedside manner. He answers questions promptly via email. I met with him for our initial IVF consult and he performed my saline sonogram and mock transfer. When I begin STIMming, I will see him for every appointment.

Most of the clinic's support staff - front desk and back desk - were excellent. They were compassionate and caring, offering a cup of water and early check-in when my emotions got the better of me. Even when I often ran late, due to traffic or emotional delay, they accommodated me.

I do wish I hadn't done as many IUIs as we did and had gone straight to IVF; however, I don't think that's the fault of the clinic since I think it's standard protocol.

I really liked the staff at the Santa Clara location. They knew me by name, gave me great advice for dealing with insurance, and were always optimistic and sympathetic during my failed attempts.

Clinic is clean and fresh and just has a great vibe. Appointments run on time and the staff are friendly, refreshments are always a available in the lobby, never had any trouble with billing - super organized clinic

The clinic is very clean, professional and organized. You are greeted with a friendly staff. They are always on time. Everyone is so helpful and accommodating. It is a stress free environment for what can be a stressful time.

The clinic is very well organized, and modern. the lab appears very high tech. Everyone we met was very friendly and genuine.......................................................................

Strengths: very clean and well organized. The staff is very nice and professional Weaknesses: there were procedures that were not covered by them such as pipelle or IMSI