Receiving Fertility Treatments in New York City
Fertility Treatment NYC Logistics for Long-Distance Patients
As CHR's overall patient volume has grown consistently over the last few years, we have been observing, in parallel, an even larger growth in the number of our long-distance patients. The definition of a long-distance patient is a patient who lives too far away from CHR's home base to receive daily routine fertility treatment New York City, at our Manhattan facility.
This includes patients who reside outside of the five boroughs of NYC, New Jersey, Connecticut and the closest areas of Pennsylvania. Amazingly, long distance patients now represent almost half of CHR's patients in active fertility treatment and more than half of all consultations. Although many long distance patients, of course, come to CHR only for a second opinion consultation, and continue their treatment locally.
Nevertheless, almost half of the center's cycle activities now involve long-distance patients receiving fertility treatment New York City at our local, with almost a quarter of our cycling patients coming from overseas. Figure 1 on the right shows our center's patient data in the first half of 2011, with about a quarter of treatment cycles representing cycles for long-distance patients. As stated above, the trend has intensified even more since then.
Logistics for long-distance patients, of course, deviate greatly from the routine logistics for local patients. Since how such long-distance logistics work in fertility treatments at CHR is one of the most frequently asked questions, here is the explanation!
Being a patient cared for by CHR always means that CHR is responsible for the patient's overall medical care, whether she is local or a long-distance patient. The fertility treatments applied are absolutely the same. It also means that CHR reports every IVF cycle to the national registries at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART). In summary, there is absolutely no difference in terms of the treatment received, wherever patients may reside.
Thinking about fertility treatment in the US?Long-Distance Patients' Fertility Treatment Steps
For most long-distance patients, recieving fertility treatment NYC, including IVF, is practically difficult, and economically inhibitive. CHR, therefore, makes every effort to minimize visits to New York City for long-distance patients: The first consultations with physicians are set up via Skype or telephone; and if in such consultations a decision is made to pursue further infertility diagnostic evaluations, CHR's Clinical Coordinators will set up the patient with a local IVF center near their home or workplace, where the testing is performed at CHR's request. Figure 2 on the left represents the general flow of testing and treatment.
CHR, at any given time, works with innumerable IVF centers all over North America and the world. With a good number of those in cities where we see steady streams of long-distance patients from, we, indeed, have established almost routine arrangements.
After such a testing round, if the patient decides to initiate an IVF cycle, we, once again, call upon those local centers to act as our agents in getting these cycles started under CHR's IVF protocols, and under the supervision of CHR's physicians. Practically, this means that all preliminary steps will be taken care of locally, and the patient will have to come for fertility treatment NYC only once, and only for a few short days.
For how many days patients will have to come our local office for fertility treatment New York City depends on what kind of an IVF cycle they are undergoing: a standard IVF cycle requires approximately 4 days in NYC because there are three days between egg retrieval and embryo transfer. If embryos have to be cultured to days 5/6, as in the case of PGD, it may require 5-6 days in the city. In egg donation cycles, it may be only 1-2 days because we really need only the semen on the day the egg donor has her egg retrieval; the recipient is needed for transfer only, three days later.
For continuity of care, your Clinical Coordinator and your physician stay assigned to you from your first consultation throughout your treatment at our center, until, hopefully, you leave us pregnant.
Our travel affiliate gladly will help with travel and hotel arrangements!
Fertility Medications for Overseas Patients
Here are a few more important points for long-distance patients: Especially overseas, many of the medications we routinely use may not be available. While there may be similar drugs available in the local market, it is important for us that long-distance patients receive exactly the same treatment as our local patients. This, of course, includes medications. Our Clinical Coordinators will, therefore, make every effort to make sure you receive the right medications.
Cost for Long-Distance Fertility Treatment NYC at CHR
Of course, CHR only charges for services provided by CHR staff. Services our long-distance patients receive locally will, therefore, only be charged by the local IVF centers.
Collaboration with Local IVF Centers
To arrange for such a local set up, of course, requires that an appropriate local IVF center exists. Even in developed countries, that is not always the case in rural areas, and in less developed countries, it may not even be the case in relatively major urban centers. In such cases, our long-distance patients will have to come to NYC for the whole IVF cycle, which usually can be shortened to somewhere between 2-3 weeks.
As a final point: CHR, of course, when possible, prefers to provide all services at our facility. We, however, do recognize that most patients' other responsibilities simply do not allow for extended absence from home and work. Therefore, we make every effort to minimize the required time for fertility treatment New York City for our long-distance patients, without compromising cycle outcomes. In practical terms, CHR will exclude certain local providers from our local provider list, if past experiences with such local centers did not meet our expectations.
We hope that this brief summary explained what it means to be a long-distance patient at CHR, and are looking forward to further inquiries.
"Why CHR?" Video
In this video, CHR's Medical Director, Norbert Gleicher, MD, touches on why so many patients come to CHR from outside of our New York City area. Most patients come to CHR with complicated cases of infertility, and often after an advice from their local physicians that they should give up hope, or resort to egg donation. With our expertise in helping women get pregnant even with severely diminished ovarian reserve, we have been able to help nearly a third of these patients get pregnant with their own eggs.
Last Updated: February 15, 2012
