Susan Sarajari

The staff is very friendly here. And competent (which sounds like a given, but at many doctor's offices sometimes I wonder). I never have to worry that I will not receive a call back when I have to leave the nurse or finance dept a message. One thing I think that is unique to Dominion is that the offer an in-home injection teaching. My coordinator sat with me and my husband for +1 hour at our kitchen table teaching us how to mix the meds, practice using the needle with a tester to get a feel for things. As someone nervous with needles, this was HUGE. Dominion clearly cares about their patients and staff - we had a big snowstorm in DC one weekend, and they put up their staff at the hotel across the street so there'd be no chance they'd miss work! Another strength of Dominion is that they have a very knowledgeable finance department. Critical when undertaking a large financial commitment like IVF. They helped battle my insurance on multiple occasions - even getting on a three-way call with me and them a few times to resolve matters. My only criticism (which honestly is slight) is that sometimes the morning monitoring hours can feel like a revolving door. With so many people coming in and out, the time with the doctors can be very fast. You need to speak up and ask question (how am I progressing, how many follicles do you see) otherwise you may not have a ton of information volunteered for you. Also, my retrieval fell on a Sunday AM, so my doctor was not there to do the procedure as I had hoped. I imagine that would have been different if it was on a week day.

A major weakness is their financial department. I worked with Leslie Jackson and continue to feel disappointed and frustrated. After I was diagnosed with fertility issues, I met with Leslie Jackson requesting an overview of what my insurance would or would not cover before I could decide to start treatment. She told me she would request auths and send to me, by email, the financial costs. With the understanding and knowledge that she probably is very busy, I did not follow up until a few weeks later when I didn't hear anything. I called my insurance prior to see if an auth was requested. It was not. When I contacted my coordinator about this, she said she would help me follow up with Leslie. I never heard from Leslie. I called my insurance later to follow up and found she had requested an auth the day after I contacted my coordinator but never heard from her that she did so. I called my insurance again in a few days and found that the auth was approved. After that, I had yet to hear from Leslie to inform me. I had to initiate contact and find out the information I requested weeks ago. Not to mention I left multiple VMs with no return calls. When I finally talked with her on the phone, no apology whatsoever, straight up business talk. She has a habit of speaking fast and as if everyone in the world should know how insurance works. There is no consideration for the financial impact that infertility issues have on an individual or couple. I would imagine that one of the biggest factors that prevent someone from considering treatment is financial capacity. The fact that Dominion Fertility has a poor financial navigation department decreases its value. Furthermore, Dr. Sarajari is not a credentialed reproductive endocrinologist specialist with Blue Cross Blue Shield. She is only credentialed as a gynecologist. As a result, she, in the eyes of insurance, does not get to charge a specialist copay, only the copay rate of a PCP/GYN. However, I had to pay the specialist copay to the clinic. While I believe Dr. Sarajari is providing specialist services, it is not my fault she did not credential herself as such with my insurance company. They are only counting a part of the copay I paid to the clinic, it created a discrepancy between what I paid and what insurance counted. This resulted in me meeting my deductible and out of pocket maximum at a later date in the eyes of insurance when in reality, I already met it because of the specialist copay rate. Before even contacting Leslie, I called my insurance multiple times to first get a better understanding of what was going on and to see if insurance made a mistake. As a previous billing provider myself, I know that insurance has screwed up before. Insurance told me the services with Dr. Sarajari were billed as PCP/GYN, not specialist so Dominion would have to resubmit for it to process and specialist. I contacted Leslie on the patient portal about requesting a refund or for her to figure things out with insurance. Of course, she responds immediately, unlike my past interactions with her where it takes longer for a response. She argued that the services were not PCP/GYN, which I don’t disagree with. However, if there is a billing error, it needs to be fixed to reflect the actual services. She said she will send bills for reprocessing. A long period of time passes, I hear nothing, I call my insurance to see if the bills were submitted for reprocessing. It has not. I wait some more, call back, still nothing submitted for reprocessing. I finally go back to Leslie who claimed that her colleagued submitted the bills for reprocessing. Then proceeds to try to tell me that if I pursued a reprocessing that I would have to pay more out of pocket because of scheduling fees. It still did not make sense to me. I asked for clarification only for her to talk fast and not really help me understand her logic. So of course I have to call insurance AGAIN and I tried to ask about the scheduling fees she spoke of. They had no idea what she was talking about. From my understanding with insurance and my own research, I wouldn’t have to pay more and the insurance company actually would pay less. My insurance told me that Dr. Sarajari simply isn’t credentialed as a specialist so if she wants to collect the specialist copay, she needs to get credentialed with insurance as one. I go back to Leslie again expressing my frustration as I have spent A LOT of time and energy on this matter with little support from her. My insurance agreed to call her to work things out but she has not returned calls. Her simple response to my distress was that she didn’t receive calls and that she works until 3:30pm. The fact that I have my embryos at the facility and I have to go back for a transfer makes me mad. I want to switch to another provider but feel stuck. I want to resolve these issues before I have to go back for the transfer but clearly it’s going to cost me more time and energy. Simply based on my experience with the financial department, I wouldn’t recommend Dominion.

The Fair Oaks location was great! Did not feel crowded at all and everything was immaculately clean. It was not hard to find in the edifice, either. Also, the staff were always polite and there was enough space to social distance. They always answered the phone.

Although I am new to this clinic, they impressed me immediately. Despite everything going on with the caronavirus, I received a call from the doctor two days after requesting one. They seemed organized and uploaded my previous labs quickly so she had them available to review. Someone proactively reached out to ensure they had the correct forms. The financial adviser is quite nice, but not incredibly flexible. I was hoping to donate eggs while doing egg freezing for my own use, and she seemed uncomfortable with asking the doctor or donor coordinator whether that was possible. She suggested I call the donor coordinator myself, but seemed discouraging. Considering how expensive egg freezing is, I wished she had been more encouraging in trying to find creative ways to financially access expensive treatment.

Very clean, organized and well run. They now use a portal to send you updates and communicate through. I had come confusion understanding my protocol calendar and they were helpful sitting down and walking me through it.

There are three facilities in the area and only the Arlington office is available for weekend and holiday monitoring. Arlington starts at 6:30 during the week and the other two offices start at 7. You will have to pay for parking at the Bethesda office. Strengths: they get you in and out in a timely manner. Weaknesses: appointment options can be limited if you need an early appointment.

The doctors and nurses I have worked with are wonderful. They each take time to make you feel at ease, and cared for. The office staff is also wonderful and organized. If I need to be constructive and provide an area for growth/weakness...we did had a few issues with the billing department. In my opinion, they were very minor and nothing that would make us choose another practice. Overall, we are very satisfied and feel like we are in good hands.

Weakness: very busy so you may not always be with your doctor as long as you'd like. May wait a few minutes longer than expected. Strengths: organized, friendly staff and nurses. Overall I'd refer others to DF and I actually have in the last three years since giving birth.

Dominion is less of a factory and more compassionate (vs like Shady Grove). I did really enjoy being their patient. I just wish we had better luck. The weakness here was that when things were not working they did not spend time trying to figure out why as much as they should have. We might have saved some failed transfers then.

Dominion Fertility is sophisticated and yet has a “small clinic” feel, which is a real plus since the staff knows the patients. The clinic is managed very well by the doctors, nurses/medical assistants, IVF coordinators, and billing department. In my experience, their treatment protocols are tailored to the patient and the doctors stay up-to-date on the research in this field so that they can explain to the patient why they recommend a particular treatment approach.