Northwestern Medicine Center for Fertility and Reproductive Medicine Chicago

C D

Same experience as the others but haven’t gone too far into the process right now. They forgot to prescribe antibiotics for a HSG. You have to constantly remind them of things and often you get conflicting and incorrect information from nurses regarding what day of your cycle you need monitoring. Just going through the diagnostic stage here you can tell it’s a mess

John Smith

First off, I am using a pseudonym to write about our experience here due to the inherent sensitive nature of this topic. My wife underwent fertility treatment here. It was an absolute abhorrent experience. This place has no sense of it. The doctors, RNs, clinic coordinators are extremely rude and all are "chickens with their heads cut off." They do not give a s***t about you and only want your money. My wife underwent egg retrieval here 28 total eggs were collected and only 2 were fertilized, which is a very low conversion rate, substantially below the standard of care which is 75-80% based on the literature. She underwent a transfer procedure with Dr. Pavone, who btw has no bedside manner or a shred of empathy. She drank gallons of water prior to her transfer only to be told she didn't need to do all of that because her uterus was retroverted. No aftercare instructions were provided. The transfer was an utter failure. Her main doctor was Dr. Jain, whose response after she got naturally pregnant and had a miscarriage was "Must be a medical mystery." I recommend staying the hell away from northwestern at all costs. Please go to Illinois Fertility clinics and ask for Dr. Kaplan. There is a night and day difference between the two places. We have been very happy with his care.

Lemna Parvini

They have taken medical negligence and incompetence to a whole different level. There is absolute zero accountability and care. The nursing and admin team are beyond incompetent and rude. Save yourself and stay away. There are far better fertility clinics in the Chicago area with teams that actually care about you as a patient and you aren't just a number and an income source for them that they need to optimize. Also, do check out CDC report on ivf success rates before you put yourself in NW's hands. What is worse is the lack of accountability, if you end up highlighting the issues they are causing you and some at the expense of your life, their first answer is "if you don't like it, go somewhere else". To them having a baby through the extensive process of ivf is equivalent to going to a grocery store and buying another bottle of milk. I started my first ivf cycle back in 2018. During that cycle a nurse made a mistake in letting the Dr know about the correct size of the largest follicle and mentioned half the size that it was which then was followed by an incorrect dose of medication prescribed to me and a call to cancel my cycle towards the end. They also forced me to have the procedure done by Dr Pavone (despite my repeated ask not to) and she had another horrifying experience with negative bedside manners right before the procedure. My Dr was Dr Confino who I selected after months of research, he was an amazing soul who cared. Unfortunately he retired in 2018. After the failed first round due to Northwestern's mistake, the practice director apologized and promised to refund the cost. This cost me 2 years of visits to Lynn Sage due to several growths for cancer monitoring. Fast forward, I decided to give this another shot in 2020-2021, I had to wait 9 months to see (video call, I've actually never met her in person) Dr Feinberg. The nursing team has gotten way worse in comparison to 2.5 years ago. Despite all my medical records from the procedure 2.5 years ago, several incompetencies and negligence repeated themselves in prescribing the right medication to me according to my allergies. I had to be on 11 different calls with the freedom pharmacy and NW team to fix that mistake. When I highlighted this error and said this is a process that any small mistake costs a lot, and that if I can't trust the team with prescribing the correct medication how can I trust them with embryos, the usual answer came back "this is how we are, you don't like it go elsewhere". During the process, the nursing team several times sent incorrect forms and asked for certain unnecessary info that later NW legal team agreed there was a mistake. They were also incapable of giving me timelines on when embryos will be ready. They behave as if it's the first time they are doing things. It's just unbelievable. I asked several times for the practice director to call me to no success. They simply do not care. I've asked for my medical records, and conveniently some information has vanished from the records. They cover their tracks really well. When I started looking to other practices, I was told that I am not alone in my experience with Northwestern, that everyone who fails several times in ivf goes outside of that awful system. I wish I had made a better choice three years ago. I wish I hadn't caused myself this repeated trauma with Northwestern. This process is a process that you would want a caring team around you, as it can be full of disappointments and heart breaks even when the team is very competent, not a team that's completely cold hearted, uncaring, incompetent, negligent and rude.

Betty L

I agree with L’s post from 2 years ago. Terrible communication, no sense of urgency about your cycle, they’ll waste so many cycles and not care at all. The only time I got a compassionate response from Dr. Boots was when I’d finally had enough and transferred to a new clinic. They messed up scheduling my IVF appts which pushed me back 3 cycles (they have a super long wait list for IVF- sorry, but my 41 year old self doesn’t have even more time to waste after the unmedicated IUIs even when I’d asked for clomid). When I called another clinic, I was immediately validated and the new doctors confirmed that a lot of what Dr. Boots and her staff had done were wrong and not standard protocol. Avoid, avoid, avoid.