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Infertility Support and Discussion
WHich doctor - SG with Greenhouse or Columbia Fert. with Sacks?
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Anonymous
| I cant decide between these two doctors and of course they are both with different practices. Has anoyone had either a good or bad experience with either doctor? |
Anonymous
| I heard Doctor Greenhouse is terrible. |
Anonymous
| I heard Dr. Greenhouse is terrible. |
Anonymous
My friend had much luck with Greenhouse -and loved him! I, myself, am a Dr. Sacks fan/success story. I don't think you can go wrong, either way. Maybe do a consult with both, and see who you like best. One to thing to keep in mind is the different style of the practices: Sacks will do just about all of your monitoring, IVF retrieval, transfer, and IUIs. At Shady Grove, if you opt for one of these lines of treatment, most of the main procedures will be at the Rockville facility, and you may be treated by different physicians at different points. Some people like the collaborative approach of Shady Grove, other people feel that Columbia's individualized treatment suits them more. On the boards, some people complain about this or that at Columbia or Shady Grove. I think you need to figure out what works best with your personality, your needs (esp, if location is very important), and what physician you mesh with. IMO, they are both fine choices. Good Luck! |
Anonymous
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I love Dr. Greenhouse, he is the most personable, yet professional doctor I have ever met. He would even call me on the weekends during the dreaded "two week wait" to just see how I was doing. And I just got pregnant with his help!
I have never read anything negative about him, so I don't know where the earlier poster "heard" her info. If you google him or even search this forum, you will read lots of good feedback about him. He is consistantly rated in Washingtonian and has lots of published research. |
Anonymous
| Greenhouse is great! I think he is the best at Shady Grove. |
Anonymous
| I was under the impression that the lab at Shady Grove was better than CFA's. However, I don't have any empirical evidence to prove that. Also, I just couldn't deal with the bad attitude of the support staff (nurses, billing staff, etc.) in the DC office of CFA. Not everyone at Shady Grove is great but overall they seemed nicer than CFA. I'm self-pay so a nice, competent billing person makes a big difference to me. I'm a big girl and can deal with a doctor that is a little cold but if I have to fight you to be nice to me when all I want to do is question a bill, make an appointment, or even sign in for a freaking appointment... give me a break. |
Anonymous
| In two years of dealing with CFA as a self-pay, I never had any significant issues with nurses or billing staff. That includes scheduling surgeries, post-ops, IUIs, IVFs, etc. |
Anonymous
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Before I would go to any clinic, I would check their statistics on the CDC's website. All fertility clinics are required to publish their success rates annually. I would give you the link, but my computer is currently being very annoying- just google "ivf" and "cdc" and you can easily find it.
Good LucK! |
SMcCartney
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Let me start by saying I have a healthy, happy, beautiful 15 month old son and my husband and I are over the moon for him. Let me add we went to three different area groups and left two for two different, equally crummy reasons.
CFA- I do NOT recommend. CFA billing is a nightmare, we left the practice because, in my opinion, backed by years of their inability to reconcile their own billing invoices, their incompetence rises to the level of negligence. The billing was horrible AND inaccurate and without answers when pressed for specifics. Portions of the protocol were covered by insurance, other parts were not. They did not have the competence to bill both, so incessantly pressured all to take the "package deal" where you pay one fee and receive no itemized bill required by insurance for reimbursement. You received different answers from different people in billing and different answers from the same person on different days. I finally took the issue with CFA to the DC Insurance Commissioner who informed me they were balance billing- the practice of which the DC staffer told me was illegal. I was talking to a mom at the Building Museum's play area back in November and we began sharing about our children. She has two, both from CFA and Sacks. I said I had gone to Sacks for ~ 1 1/2 years and loved him as a physician, but that the negligence of his billing office was stupefying and had caused my husband and I terrible stress and heartache. She said the exact same thing- loved Sacks as a doctor, and that his billing was "a nightmare". This is a direct quote- nightmare. Given that her two were older than my little guy, it made me sad that Sack's billing office had been so terrible and nothing was done to change it so that my husband and I could be spared that same experience. I had loved Sacks as a doctor, but lost some respect for him when my husband and I went to him about the billing office and he said he "did not get involved with billing". He did agree with my read on the BCBS policy, that it covered blood work and sonograms and urged me to take it up with my insurance. That was a part of the issue- the majority of the issue is that his billing staff billed us for procedures never received, told me I was a Clomid patient when I had never taken the drug! I told billing to correct the error, even if it had no economic repercussions, I did not want any medical file to be inaccurate as it may be needed or used for reference and could affect future medical choices made on my behalf, etc, etc. Nothing- I checked back three separte times and the reference was still there. They also billed friends of ours for cryo storage for an embryo that had long been successfully implanted!!! IUIs were covered in part by our insurance, but needed a prior auth. One of the nurses, who I felt was great, said she would call and do that for us, no problem. Insurance denied the claim, saying there was no prior authorization. I asked the nurse about the issue, thinking there had to be some mistake, and she told me that BILLING TOLD HER SHE WAS NOT TO DO THE PREAUTH. This is how very, very bad things were for us at CFA. We had continued to stay despite the billing because of Sack's great care. However, that Sacks said he did not "get involved" with his staff's performance and its impact on his patients disappointed and, frankly, shocked us. You work hard to develop a relationship of trust with your RE. We finally left. Without a child, without any respect for the practice, and without any invoices that reconciled across months. It was horrible, horrible, horrible. We are now working through BCBS because CFA is contracted with them and there is, hopefully, some recourse. However, fertility is the wild west so far as regulation and oversight is concerned and it is making many, many people many, many dollars and I have no faith BCBS, the fox, will take charge of the henhouse. Fertility is such a personal type of treatment, personal and so emotional. Once I had heard the same horror stories about his billing from a patient that had gone before me, I no longer recommend CFA or Sacks. Fertility issues are a terrible heart break to endure. You are not lucky getting lucky, able to get pregnant by rolling around after watching Leno, checking a EPT stick three weeks later. It is not an easy time- by the time you go to IVF you have already been through some hell. Adding insensitive, incompetent staff to the mix is too, too much. It is money we are talking about, a huge stressor on a good day. And, in an IVF experience, it rarely feels like a really good day until you get to deliver and hold your child, knowing they are really here. To me, having staff that is so negative, obstructionist and just plain incompetent added to the IVF mix is just plain cruel. That is my experience with CFA. I would recommend GIVF in Fairfax. It was a drive for us, but in this journey, nothing matters but the destination, so we were all in. GIVF was professional, kind, supportive (and the waiting room is lovely. I know it seems small, but the money given over to fertility places yields lots and lots of profit- show love for you patients and put it back into the environment that they will have to share during their stay with your practice!! I have heard that CFA finally updated their waiting area, it was pretty grim. GW's was infinitely worse- miniscule, and streamlined to treat you like a widget on a conveyor belt, lining women up to change into gowns in two changing closets (with material curtains, no doors, no privacy) and then lining us up to wait outside a door in a drafty gown to go into the single sonogram room. Awful, awful. WONDERFUL nurses at GW, loved, loved them. Doctors- no. I told one of them they needed to go into radiology. Not much bed side manner there, and I needed a lot, honestly. I hyperstimulated after conception and lost at ~ nine weeks. I was not an easy patient, but the set up left much to be desired and the doctor was not "there". He got as human as evidence the whole time when I lost. He rose to human, he did not reach great heights. I do not recommend GW, unless they have new MD staff that have joined in the last two+ years) It is worth the drive for the atmosphere, ease of treatment, billing that will will part to you and part to insurance (lo and behold, BCBS covered bloodwork and ultrasound that CFA billing claimed they would not, the basis for CFA's REFUSAL to even BILL BCBS for it!!! Looking for the case up front from us.) This is dredging up really painful crap for me, but if I can prevent one woman from having to endure any of this, it is worth it. It is also worth it to get the help you need to become the parent you so very want to be. Good luck in all your efforts and stay positive, hang with the happy peeps in your life, and get all the support and love you need in your journey. |
Anonymous
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Sounds like the PP was at CFA a while ago. I was a patient there for over a year, just signed out to an OB last month. I think they have a new billing staff. While it's not perfect we have not had any of the issues the PP mentioned. I will say our case was a bit complicated -I was covered by two insurances, but only for certain portions of the procedures. We paid out of pocket for IUIs and IVFs. I was nervous about the billing, and watched them like a hawk. We did not have any problems.
One thing I did learn from a friend who has his own medical practice is that it is extremely hard to find good help for a lot of the practice administration-type jobs...and these positions are often very high turnover. I was very sorry to hear about PP's bad experience. In my experience, though, Columbia is functioning better these days from a billing point of view. |
SMcCartney
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Congratulations graduating to OB and best wishes for a healthy, happy pregnancy and baby! I love IVF success stories, thank you for sharing. Rest lots, exercise as much as you can. It helps tons- as does the water. Really, they push the heck out of it, but it really does help.
We left CFA in early 2007 (still wrangling over billing, it makes me wonder how long they will "let" us ignore them) and left GW in summer of 2005. What lingers for me over the CFA practice is Dr. Sack's tacit approval, at least acceptance, of his staff's incompetence and the very real economic and emotional impact it had for what was evidently many people. Many people in emotionally challenging times and, very likely, economically challenging, as well. I, too, have heard how difficult it is to get good admin help. Pay them more and train them, train them, train them. Better pay will invariably lead to better staffing pool choices. All employers, especially doctors, and in particular REs, are responsible for their staff and the experiences of their patients at their hands. |
Anonymous
| I have had some similar horror stories about billing from the DC office of SG. I am too covered by 2 insurances and it's such a pain in the neck. I never get a complete straight answer. They are supposed to return calls within 24 hours! Yeah right! I try to be so friendly and still get nothing. IT totally adds to the stress of IVF, which we don't need. |
Anonymous
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PP - Don't deal with the billing in the SG DC office, just deal with the Rockville office - they actually know what they are doing and saying!
I may be a POA for doing so, but I don't care - as you said, we don't need to add to the stress that we already have. |
Anonymous
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I'll chime in on CFA, too: a nightmare. I left the practice after three months. No billing issues, but the nurses were brusque, sloppy and impossible to reach. Sacks kept saying he would "deal with the problem immediately" and never did. I actually didn't care much for Sacks personally, either - he talked a little too much about his expensive Mediterranean cruises and favorite restaurants. Kind of icky. |