I was with Kaiser and worked with Dr. Stubin at the Silver Spring office. Great guy, great doc, and very compassionate. I liked him because he was really good at talking me through his thought process, and he was very familiar with the ins and outs of the Kaiser program requirements.

In addition, his office staff was WONDERFUL! From the front desk, to the nurses, to his coworkers...loved them all.

when we first begin this process I was with Kaiser. I actually found it fairly frustrating- but I probably wasn't pushy enough.
I had read TCOYF and knew that I was not ovulating properly.
After about 8 mos of TTC I made an appt with a GYN at Kaiser.
He basically told me to stop worrying about it and stop charting my cycles etc. Did not want to look at any of my charts that showed a lack of ovulation and super long cycles.
He did agree to do a day 21 blood test for ovulation.
My progesterone from that test came back at like 2.5 or something like that. Kaiser interpreted that as 'ovulation' b/c there was some progesterone and basically said keep trying.
I asked to speak with the nurse who explains results. She was a little more helpful agreed that it indicated I wasn't ovulating- but told me that we needed to wait a year.
Then she said that as soon as the year was up I needed to immediately rush back in so that we could get through a bunch of tests and they could make the infertility referral since we probably needed IVF.
That is not something we were prepared to do and I ended up switching to BlueCross/BlueShield so I could go to a new OBGYN.
This was about 3 years ago-- things may have changed.

Tizzy wrote:What did you think about the Kaiser referral process? Can you estimate your costs involved for IUI/IVF? If you liked your Kaiser OB/GYN, would you mind sharing his/her name? I am really in a bind here trying to decide if Kaiser is best for us in this infertility journey. Thanks.

NP here. Simon Wilson, OB/GYN in the Falls Church office, is excellent.

As for the referral process, my experience was that we got an infertility workup and got referred.

I'm earlier in the process and haven't had the Shady Grove consult yet so don't have all the details on my treatment plan or costs, but we are probably looking at ivf.

What did you think about the Kaiser referral process? Can you estimate your costs involved for IUI/IVF? If you liked your Kaiser OB/GYN, would you mind sharing his/her name? I am really in a bind here trying to decide if Kaiser is best for us in this infertility journey. Thanks.

and . . (to continue my post from above) that is the process I went through. Three (non-successful) IUIs (at 39) and one (succesful) IVF (at 40) later (all through Shady Grove, vis a vis Kaiser). If you are older (38-39ish), I would recommend just skipping straight to IVF . . .

Kaiser refers you out to Shady Grove. You just need your OBGYN to make the referral. I think you have to have had an HSG plus the usual day three bloodwork, and a semen analysis. That plus one year of fruitless trying, and you are good to go (er, so to speak . . !) for a referral.

Has anyone been through the infertility process with Kaiser? We are nearing the 1 year mark and I'm getting ready to email my obgyn to make an appt and start talking about what we need to do next. FWIW, my insurance plan covers IUI and up to 3 cycles of IVF. I tried searching the Kaiser site to find a RE, but can't seem to find that listed as a specialty. I would appreciate words of wisdom from anyone who has been here since kaiser seems to work a little different than most plans. Thanks in advance!