How to Find the Right Fertility Clinic for You

Recommendations and Reviews

It goes without saying that most fertility clinics’ websites will tell you that they’re the best option for you. While websites can be really helpful for understanding more about the fertility treatment pathways on offer, it can be difficult to get a genuine, impartial ‘feel’ for the clinic. That’s where recommendations and reviews are so helpful; an opportunity for you to get a real-life insight into each fertility clinics’ strengths and weaknesses from someone who’s been through the process themselves.

By looking at a clinic’s reviews on Google, for example, you can then filter for keywords to see reviews relevant to your intended type of fertility treatment, like IUI, IVF, egg collection and more. Websites like Doctify are also helpful for providing verified reviews for individual consultants.

That’s where organisations like Fertility Help Hub are so helpful; the founders of these groups have sometimes been through fertility treatment themselves. In this way, they are uniquely placed to work hand-in-hand with people currently going through a fertility journey – to share insight into the service on offer from each clinic.

As well as being extremely knowledgeable, these organisations are also incredibly friendly and happy to help. The Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health is proud to have been recommended by Fertility Help Hub for the last two years.

Getting to Know the Clinic

Hopefully, reviews and recommendations have helped you to create a shortlist of fertility clinics, perhaps two or three, which seem worthy of further exploration. Once you’ve got that shortlist the best next step is to spend a little bit of time getting to know each one.

Reviews and recommendations are excellent, but the feeling you get from each fertility clinic in this shortlist phase is perhaps even more useful. At CRGH we offer Open Evenings every two weeks – they’re currently conducted virtually and give you the opportunity to listen to a fertility doctor and embryologist and ask questions. We also offer free Mini-Consultations which are a really valuable resource for patients deciding which fertility clinic is the best one for them; it gives you the opportunity to speak with a doctor one-to-one and ask about your specific circumstances.

Most fertility clinics will offer something similar and it really is worth investing some time upfront to decide on your clinic before you start investing both emotionally and financially during fertility treatment itself.

As well as the very important information about fertility treatment types, success rates and pricing, at this point, you should also be judging clinics in ways that are more difficult to quantify.

To help pick a fertility clinic, ask yourself these questions:

• How did your interactions make you feel?
• Did everything run to time?
• Did you feel understood?

It’s elements like these which ultimately distinguish an average fertility clinic from a great one and ensure your journey will be as easy and stress-free as possible.

The Practicalities: Location, Fertility Treatment Types and Pricing

While recommendations, reviews and feel will help you to narrow down your search significantly, there are some practical factors that you should always keep in mind when deciding on your fertility clinic.

Location, in particular, is an interesting one. How do you balance finding the “right” clinic, with the amount of time it will take you to get to and from that clinic for each scan or test? In an ideal world, your perfect clinic would be right on your doorstep, yet with the majority of fertility clinics being based in and around London, that’s unlikely to be the reality for many people pursuing treatment.

However, some clinics (including CRGH) have gone a long way in recent years to overcome this challenge for their patients. At CRGH we now offer virtual consultations for all appointments where that’s an option (i.e, anything which doesn’t require your physical attendance) and also have satellite clinics in other parts of the country.

Before you decide on a fertility clinic, understand which appointments you’ll need to attend the clinic in person, and which you can attend virtually. Pop the journey to your shortlisted fertility clinics into a map app and then balance that journey with the other considerations of choosing a fertility clinic, as outlined above.

If you’re considering a more “niche” treatment type – whether that’s shared motherhood, egg sharing or donor treatment, it’s essential that you understand if your preferred fertility clinic offers that type of treatment, and (importantly) how regularly they work with people in a similar position to yourself.

CRGH have dedicated teams set up specifically to work with surrogacy patients, as an example, ensuring we can provide the very best care for your specific journey – rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s this sort of attention to detail that will allow a fertility clinic to provide genuine bespoke care.

This brings us to a factor that people often tip-toe around; pricing. It’s well known that fertility treatment can be expensive and it’s therefore important that you understand the likely costs before embarking on treatment. The best fertility clinics should be transparent on costs; CRGH has worked closely with the Competition and Markets Authority guidance to ensure anyone considering treatment with us is given all the information they need to understand the likely cost of treatment.

We also work closely with companies such as Access Fertility and Carrot to provide treatment in an affordable way. The best advice here is to make sure you’re comparing potential clinics’ costs like-for-like; is medication included in this quote? How about storage or additional tests or scans? All this information will help you make an informed decision on which fertility clinic is right for you.

Hopefully, these tips have helped outline the best way to find the right fertility clinic for your treatment. While there are many options (and it can sometimes feel confusing) there’s now a wealth of information and organisations created specifically to help navigate these early stages. The HFEA also provide a useful tool for deciding on a clinic (click here to learn more).

All being well you will soon be in the position to offer reviews, recommendations and advice of your own.

To find out more about CRGH’s Open Evenings and to book a date that suits you, click here.

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