best fertility clinic in D.C. or Maryland
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Anonymous
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I expect this question has been asked before, but I thought I would ask it again. Currently with Shady Grove. I am thinking of changing fertility clinics. What is the best fertility clinic in D.C. and why do you think so? Aside from personal experience and opinions (which matter of course) what stats can you point to to support your answer? Any help on this would be greatly and deeply appreciated. The process has not been easy. Thanks! 
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Anonymous
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Not what you're asking exactly, but we left the area and went to Cornell. Worked with Shady Grove, and though they help a lot of people, we weren't happy there. Their cookie cutter approach didn't work for us, and they were unwilling to change the protocol that obviously wasn't working.
Many women like Columbia Fertility because Dr. Abassi believes in immune issues and tests for them, though she's not an RI like Dr. Braverman (in NY) or Dr. Kwak Kim (in Chicago). Had the CCRM location been open a few years ago when we switched from SG to Cornell, we probably would've gone there instead. |
Anonymous
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Make sure to check the IVF success rates from the CDC and SART. Some of the clinics in the area have scarily low success rates.
https://www.cdc.gov/art/artdata/index.html https://www.sart.org/clinic-pages/find-a-clinic/ |
Anonymous
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I am starting at CCRM after being at Dominion.
Main difference to me is that the Dr really zero-ed in on my issue and has tailored my meds. At Dominion, they were like, well let's just keep trying, with no sense of changing things up based on my numbers. I know a few women who have had good experiences at CCRM after transferring. |
Anonymous
When you say Cornell do you mean Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Reproductive Medicine. https://ivf.org How does it work if you go to a clinic in NYC when you live in D.C.? Thanks so much for the help.
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Anonymous
| Its a toss up and would depend on what you are looking for. The most data driven based care I received was at Genetics and IVF. The best place for experimenting was GW - they were willing to try options that only yielded a 1-10% chance of working. I received inadequate care at both SG and Dominion. |
Anonymous
| Most people would say the one that helped them get pregnant is the best one. In my case, I have two kids from SHF and to me that’s the best one. |
Anonymous
| Columbia got me pregnant and I still wouldn't recommend them. If I need additional treatment, I'll be at Shady Grove. |
Anonymous
| I think CCRM has personalized attention and is easy to Deal with. Very posh. |
Anonymous
| I looked at the SART website (link in one of the early comments) and checked success rates for every clinic within 30 miles of my DC zip code Shady Grove had the highest success rates, across the board. I went there, to the Rockville Clinic, and recommend it hands down. |
Anonymous
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Case-in-point of 18:09's post: In contrast to 18:02's experience, I received inadequate care at GW. We then did consults at Columbia and Dominion, decided to go with Dominion, and became pregnant on our first try there. I can't recommend it highly enough based on my good experience there.
The big lesson I took away after my terrible experiences at GW is that, to me, the experience level/practice philosophy of the RE is critically important. My RE at GW (who I was specifically referred to by my GW MFA OB) was only 1 year out of fellowship when I became a patient there. She would not deviate from the ASRM practice opinions, despite my clinical picture suggesting that further testing and supportive therapies may have been beneficial. I purposely met with REs who had multiple decades of experience when deciding where to go next. I felt their experiences seeing so many more patients over the years gave them a broader perspective and knowledge base with which to consider my case on a more personalized basis. |
Anonymous
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This is anecdotal, but I was with Shady Grove. I was successful on the first cycle at 43 yo. From what I’ve heard it may not be the best choice for complex cases, but the size meant flexibility, lots of complied data on what works and doesn’t work, and it was relatively inexpensive. With the military discount I was able to do the multi cycle for the price of one cycle. I didn’t need it but it relieved some of the pressure for it to work the first time.
I was fine with the lack of personalized service and handholding. Everyone was nice and very professional. Always been attentive when I called afterhours with questions or concerns. |
Anonymous
My DW did early monitoring at Shady Grove but then went to Cornell fairly early in the cycle as the doctors there do the monitoring, not a tech. They make very small adjustments to meds as a result of the monitoring - this is part of what makes them so excellent. Generally she would go up a few days before me as we did have one child at the time she was cycling with them. We are lucky to have family in the area, because when it was time for me to go up (a day before retrieval usually) we'd leave DS with his grandma and aunt. We preferred Air B&B leading up to transfer, and would usually come home between retrieval and transfer day to save a little money and so DW could be with DS. A couple of trips we took DS with us - Cornell is open to having children in their waiting room (but I often kept him downstairs during monitoring out of courtesy for the other patients). It seems like a lot to coordinate, but it worked and I would do it all over again to have the baby we have now. And spending time in NYC isn't all bad, either. |
Anonymous
| I was a pretty simple case and got pregnant with SG on my 2nd cycle (and got financial aid that made the cost reasonable). My friends who had a longer path swear by Cornell (I believe you do monitoring locally and then travel for procedures). |
Anonymous
| I was very old (43-3) and had success at Shady Grove. I asked lots of questions, had repeated consults with the dr., got tests elsewhere when I needed to, asked for modifications which my dr agreed to do (Widra), and they did a lot to advance my chances (3 day transfer, high # transferred etc.) It's a numbers game. |