Peter Ahlering (OB/ GYN)

The clinic has poor communication with each other. The Dr and nursing staff are great, the office staff is helpful. At times, I feel like there is a lot of miscommunication in their billing department, about things that I need to pay out of pocket for and things that should be billed to insurance. I am so glad I now have coverage for infertility. Last year around this time my previous coordinator made a huge mistake. We had planned to do our transfer in December and the coordinator didn't realize that we had frozen eggs not embryos. Even though she had my chart (I think) and the office wasn't prepared to do our transfer. We didn't know my husband needed to see a urologist to do a work up for his azospermia. Super frustrating.

Weaknesses would be lack of communication in the beginning for virtual visit patients. Strengths would be everyone is always very positive even when a situation is frustrating. They have definitely tried to improve communication once we were able to actually go into the office and find out what we needed to know and that they were about to figure out what we didn’t know.

They are flexible with scheduling, but due to their busyness, it feels a lot like an assembly line and you are a number, both during appointments and how they try to have all patients on the same timing and cycle for efficiency.

Their strengths are that they’re really efficient and they always have someone to cover when staff are out of office. Many of their staff are really knowledgeable. Their areas for improvement are that the billing office seems to make lots of mistakes so you have to stay on top of double checking your billing codes and charges. They also have so many patients that it can feel like you’re on an assembly line.

One of the hardest things for me about being a patient at MCRM was how much everything was constrained by the hours of operation. I often felt that my cycles were triggered early or on the late side to avoid IUI on the weekend. I also decided against moving forward with IVF with this clinic in part because they have all patients take birth control to control their cycle and have them cycle on a schedule. While this may work well for some diagnoses, with my DOR, I felt it would oversuppress my egg maturation/ovulation. They also recommend banking eggs for several retrievals with DOR, but that doesn't match up with current best evidence for treatment strategies on maximizing embryo creation. I felt frustrated that they weren't able to provide more personalized treatment.

Scheduling was wonderful, however their eIVF portal used for coorespondence was slow and had several issues at times. While we primarily visited the Chesterfield office, due to relocating to Texas we concluded out transfer and cycle at the Tulsa location. We wish that we had been able to use the Tulsa office the whole time. Their facility seemed more welcoming and it was a much calmer environment.

MCRM is professional, compassionate, and accomodating. One thing they could do better is help their patients understand the process (especially if they are brand new to the fertility world). I often felt that I had to be my own advocate and had to do a lot of research on my own first. I think they are very good with getting great results for MOST patients, but I would have preferred a more personal approach.

In my experience, Dr Ahlering and MCRM are all about money. They did not care about my health , their terrible results ( after verbally promising the world), nor about wasting our hard earned money. Dr Ahlering knew NOTHING about our file or our medication list in our post retrieval meeting. When my husband pressed what he would do differently, his eyes were wide and he said "I don't know I have not reviewed your medication list." So why are we even having this meeting? I think they cycle as many people as possible to make the most money possible which is not in your best interest if anything goes wrong ( which in my case did). I would steer clear.

strengths: good price (for out-of-pocket), nice atmosphere, runs on time, labs on-site, after-hours phone line available weaknesses: you feel like one of many, just being run through the protocol (esp for egg retrieval cycles), they make you use their online system for communication (messaging) and medication protocols, and it stinks.

Everyone at MCRM is friendly and makes you feel cared for. I feel that they value your time and schedule your appointments in a way so that you aren’t sitting in the waiting room for very long. The receptionist is always friendly and has her paperwork organized and ready to go when you arrive for your appointment. All in all I am so pleased with MCRM and I will never switch to any other fertility clinic.

The staff at the front desk is frequently rude, not only to myself, but also other patients. They are exceptionally hard to get records from, even after you have paid for them. I paid $32.89 for 17 pages of my medical record. I requested the full record; however, I was only sent partial labs and imaging reports. Michelle Brinkmeyer, who is their contact for medical records, stated that they do not send consultation or progress notes with the record because it is the physician’s prospective on the patient. She also stated that she printed off my husband’s semen analysis, put it with our record, and gave it to Dr. Ahlering (I suppose for him to approve?) after we requested our records and he removed the semen analysis report before giving the record back to her. She noticed this, did not question where the report went, and mailed our record without it. When I called to ask where the rest of our record was, she said Dr. Ahlering was out of town and she would have to ask him about it the next day. The next day, she said she would mail us “some notes from our record” and the SA report. She said the medications, dosages, and treatment plans were proprietary to their facility and they would not be released to myself or my new doctor. After telling her that I would check with my new doctor and the US Department of Health and Human Services to see if this was standard practice, she advised that I could print flowsheets off of the patient portal with the treatment information. I did not receive a refund for the missing information, nor would I have paid $32.89 for my records if I would have known that I would only be receiving partial labs from an outside facility and ultrasound reports. I will know in a few days if I actually get the SA report and “some notes from my record” in the mail.

The clinic is beautiful. The staff is friendly besides Mel in finance. I almost didn’t move forward with the clinic because of her. Then she was rude the day before my retrieval when I called to ask a question about my down payment. She was great the original meeting. Once I put my down payment she no longer had to be nice. I have great things to say about everyone besides Mel.

The clinic is very clean and bright and the staff is friendly and caring. They are all there to help you get your dream family and make you feel comfortable. Our first IUI we were a little confused on where my husband did the sperm wash and which desk to see to get checked in for my part of the IUI but they were very nice and directed us where to go for my husband and where to get checked in for my part.

Strengths: science, confidentiality, compassionate, great location Weakness: financial information was not the most forthcoming. It required us to ask intricate questions to assure we had a clear understanding.

Jen Bader is the patient coordinator and she does a great job and connecting patients with other patients and making everyone feel like a family. They organize fun family events and meet and greets where patients can meet each other and talk to Dr. Ahlering. They are always extremely friendly and quick to respond. I had an easy time working with the finance department as well

MCRM has some of the state of the art technology and is constantly updating and adding to make things better. They expanded their offices. The front desk person always greeting you with a smile. Sometimes the billing was behind several months and would bill you 3 or 4 months after things took place. They have great resources including a Facebook group for patients to communicate with each other.

I love this clinic. Expect to be greeted by happy, kind and smiling staff. It's very clean and a positive environment. I almost never had to wait in the waiting room before my appointment which was always nice. I honestly don't have a single weakness to list.

The clinic and staff are very well run and wonderfully caring. The only real issue we have had was with billing, and they were still very understanding it just took a bit of time to straighten things out. Part of this was because of miscommunication and misunderstanding, but as I said, they were still very patient. The clinic has "offices" on 2 seperate floors, so its necessary to know where you are going, but if you show up on the wrong floor, it isn't a difficult thing to fix. They work really well to accommodate you and your needs, we live over 2000 miles away and they do phone consults and order some of the pre- testing done nearer to us.

Strength would be the compassion and working with each person individually. They have great success rates because Dr. Ahlering knows what he is doing. They are very busy so sometimes they don't return calls super fast but they never forget you.

I think they’ve gotten so busy, they forgot about the personal aspect of all this and how daunting ivf can be. You really have to seek out answers to questions. After failures, it’s hard to get an appointment any sooner than 2 weeks out. After a failed transfer, the sooner the consultation, the better. Trust me. They have great technology though that as far as I know, no other clinics have, especially in regards to sperm selection. They will work with you financially, particularly after failed cycles.

The biggest strength of the clinic is that they have a patient support specialist. This really made this clinic stand out above others to me. They organize patient events and gatherings. She also manages a Facebook page for patients which allows patients to connect. They also coordinate a cycle buddy program so you have someone to connect with during the IVF cycle. They are amazing with their patient outreach. Occasionally it does feel a little disorganized since they cycle all of the patients at the same time so it gets pretty chaotic and it can be difficult to get in touch with someone once the phones are turned off after hours. They have an emergency line for after hours but some questions are better off not considering it an emergency!

In December of 2016 my husband and I saw our FIRST specialist. We left the appointment feeling hopeless! The doctor was rude.. he showed no enthusiasm... there was no detailed plan. They made us watch a video in a small dark room, by ourselves! It.Was.AWFUL! A year passed. Then, after talking with a high school friend, (and MCRM patient!) my husband wanted a second opinion. I sent an email to MCRM on MLK day 2018, not expecting a call back because the office was closed. Within 30 MINUTES someone was on the phone with me, getting everything scheduled! And let me tell you, I JUST KNEW!! I KNEW it would be different! I KNEW they cared! I KNEW we had found our clinic! We met with Dr. Ahlering on 1-30-2018 and, for the first time in YEARS, we felt HOPEFUL, EXCITED, and so very THANKFUL! MCRM has different technology and Dr. A showed us, in detail, the difference in his lab as compared to others. We knew it wouldn’t be easy. We knew there were no guarantees. But, when you feel supported in this journey, it makes all the difference!! There were times during our cycle that I had to advocate for myself and be assertive but the nurses were always quick to call me back and answer all my questions!

They are so busy - so they are occasionally running behind. They offer early appointments which I appreciate because of my work schedule. You likely won't see Dr. A all that often but the rest of the staff is great and I always feel well taken care of.

Overall, MCRM is a marketing machine that is attempting to grow their clinic and attract new patients. They do offer relatively low prices and are interested in using newer technologies to improve success. I do think they believe they are doing good for people, however, it is hard to understand how any clinic can excuse charging such high prices to cash pay patients while giving huge discounts to insuranced patients (through their agreements with the insurance companies) but this is an industry-wide issue not specific to MCRM. Dr. Ahlering is knowledgable and wants a good outcome for his patients. Even so, they are actively building on to their facility with new construction, etc. The discounts are OK - but very limited. I would personally like to see a needs based discount for couples with low income to allow those of us with a subsistence income to have the chance to have a baby too.

The clinic was nice. It was in a nice location in Chesterfield. It was sometimes hard to get through to a real person when calling the office. The front desk ladies were nice. However, they didn't always know what was going on so I would have to tell them what I needed at my next appointment.