Medically reviewed by Norbert Gleicher, MD, FACOG, FACS - Written by CHR Staff - Updated on Jan 15, 2015
Welcome to the Center for Human Reproduction (CHR), one of the largest and most respected fertility programs in the United States. CHR is located in New York City. We offer comprehensive infertility services as outlined on our web site, with special access programs to our overseas patients with special consideration for your accommodation and language needs. If you advise us in advance, we will assure hotel accommodations for you close to our Center and will also make sure that your language needs are met when you come to see our physicians.
Our International Program serves at any one time a large number of patients with different diagnoses and different needs. Most patient, however, take part in our Oocyte Donation and Egg Donation and Embryo Donation (Adoption) Programs. These programs are highly popular with international patients because of the large number of excellent oocyte donors CHR has available in both program locations. We cooperate with physicians all over the world in preparing patients for such cycles locally, so that their stay in the U.S. can be kept as short as possible. The same standard IVF cycles or IVF cycles that require Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).
Besides English, our physicians and staff speaks Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Russian, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Georgian, Romanian, Japanese, Tagalog, German and Hebrew. For all other languages, we can obtain interpretation/translation services as needed.
Receiving Fertility Treatments
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 more than half of CHR's patients seeking consultations at our New York City center. Although many long distance patients come to CHR only for a second opinion consultation online or in the office and continue their treatment locally, a significant portion of IVF cycle activities are now also performed for long-distance patients.
Figure 1 on the right shows our center's patient data for the year 2014, with ove half of all patients coming from outside the greater NYC metro area, and a quarter from outside the United States for our specialized treatment expertise.
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 a local or 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. However, how the treatment is delivered can differ greatly.
Treatment Steps for Long-Distance Patients
For most long-distance patients, receiving fertility treatment in 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 phone or video; 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 a large number of 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 to NYC for fertility treatment 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. For some patients whose response to ovarian stimulations needs to be monitored more closely (for example, older women whose eggs have a very small window of "right" maturity levels), we may need a slightly longer stay in NYC, but usually not longer than a week. 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 Treatment 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 Choose Center for Human Reproduction New York?
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.
Norbert Gleicher, MD, FACOG, FACS
Norbert Gleicher, MD, leads CHR’s clinical and research efforts as Medical Director and Chief Scientist. A world-renowned specialist in reproductive endocrinology, Dr. Gleicher has published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and lectured globally while keeping an active clinical career focused on ovarian aging, immunological issues and other difficult cases of infertility.