When we meet with couples, the most common concern is cost and the number one misconception is that fertility treatments are not going to be covered by insurance. The truth is, for about 90 percent of our patients, some portion of evaluations or procedures are covered by insurance. At the Arizona Center for Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, we work with you to best utilize your insurance and mitigate any costs.

Every couple is different—insurance benefits and causes of infertility can vary greatly. Because of this, there are three things you should know about insurance coverage and what fertility treatments will cost you.

1. We Determine Your Benefits & Try to Work Within Them

Before you come in for your first appointment, we have an idea of what your insurance will cover. When we set up your first visit over the phone, we’ll ask you a few questions about your insurance so we can have your benefits ready for you by the time you do come in. We want to let you know what to expect—whether there’s a specialist office copay, if you’ll be responsible for a portion of your deductible, or if you actually have infertility benefits. Regardless of benefits, we don’t want our patients to be in the dark about anything, and will make sure they have at least a ballpark figure of what they can expect the cost to be.

Coverage is always different. Some patients will just have their diagnosis and initial evaluation covered. For other patients, their insurance will cover diagnosis and treatments for the underlying medical causes of infertility, but not any procedures (such as IVFs or IUIs). When a patient does have infertility benefits, we’ll check to see if they need to enroll in a program and what their insurance covers specifically. Whatever a patient’s coverage is, we try our hardest to work within their benefits while including as many infertility benefits as possible.

2. We Start Treatment by Examining the Underlying Medical Causes

Because more of our patients have insurance coverage that will only cover the medical causes of infertility, we begin our treatments by identifying and correcting those possible causes. Many of our patients are surprised to learn that even if they don’t have specific fertility coverage, several of the underlying conditions and causes of infertility are medical conditions with evaluations and treatments that are actually covered by insurance. It’s often much simpler and more cost effective to correct the medical issues relating to infertility. For instance, a patient with irregular cycles will find it difficult to conceive; once that’s corrected, she can easily become pregnant and not need any further treatments.

We don’t just jump to an IVF procedure because that option is available. We make it a priority to really look for the medical causes behind your infertility so it can be covered by insurance. Our goal is to help you have a baby, and that can often be accomplished without the need for any actual fertility treatments or procedures.

3. We Do Everything Within Our Power to Mitigate All Other Costs

Sometimes we exhaust all insurance benefits and patients have to pay out of pocket. We never want the cost of treating infertility to prevent a couple from starting a family and having a baby. We keep our prices very reasonable and work with you to mitigate any outside costs, like medication or sperm and egg donations, when those are necessary. We also have discounted packages and in-house payment plans to make the costs of procedures less of a burden.

At the Arizona Center for Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, we want to help you realize your dream of having a family, regardless of your insurance coverage or costs. To learn more about what treatments and procedures may be covered by your insurance benefits, call us at 520-326-0001 or visit us online.

Using donated sperm to achieve pregnancy is a relatively simple process. It’s an especially common procedure for same-sex female couples who want to have a baby and start a family. Here is everything you need to know about using a sperm donor to achieve pregnancy.

Who Can Benefit from a Sperm Donor?

Historically, there have been two categories of couples who visit the Arizona Center for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility seeking a sperm donor to get pregnant: hetero couples with male infertility issues, and same-sex female couples.

In the past, many heterosexual couples would use a sperm donor if the male partner produced little to no sperm, or producing sperm that didn’t mature properly. However, advances in assisted reproductive technology have given us the ability to achieve pregnancy even when there are some initial issues. Now, our clinic is helping more same-sex female couples start their families through sperm donation. In fact, about 95 percent of couples utilizing sperm donation are same-sex couples. And in many cases, both women are able to participate in the pregnancy.

Using a Sperm Donor

When a sperm donor is indeed necessary, there are two ways to go about getting that contribution.

Friend or Family Member

Some couples choose to ask a friend or family member to donate sperm. When a male relative donates the sperm, they carry the same genetic material so the family genes are passed down.

Sperm Bank

The most common option for sperm donation is using a sperm bank. One great advantage of a sperm bank is that all the donors are already pre-screened for health, family and medical backgrounds, and communicable diseases, so every donor is deemed healthy before they can donate. By using a vial of sperm from a reputable bank, we know for certain there are no possible diseases that can be transferred to affect the health of the pregnancy or baby. They also give couples the option to choose a sperm donor based on dozens of characteristics like ethnic background, educational background, and physical or behavioral features.

Sperm banks are also extremely accessible. If we order sperm from a bank, we can potentially have that sperm the next day. It would be pre-screened, quarantined, and ready to use immediately.

Choosing a Sperm Donor

With hundreds of options offered by sperm banks, deciding on which donor to use can be overwhelming. Because all the donors have already been screened for health, there really is no one better option than another. They all have the same fertility potential. All couples need to do is choose the characteristics they want in their donor.

So when couples come to our clinic and ask for advice, we usually start by telling them to decide on the characteristics that are most important to them. Once you have those aspects chosen, just look at the donors who meet that criteria—it greatly narrows down the options and makes the choice less daunting.

What to Expect Next

Once the donor has been chosen, using the sperm to achieve pregnancy is not difficult, painful, or horribly expensive. Just like with any other couple, we always take the time to make sure the female partner is healthy and won’t experience any difficulty getting pregnant. When we know the female is healthy enough to carry the baby, there are two procedures we can complete to help the woman get pregnant.

Artificial Insemination

Artificial insemination is very similar to achieving pregnancy through intercourse. We first verify that the female partner is ovulating—this can be determined through at-home monitoring or through the clinic. The procedure itself lasts no more than three to five minutes and is no more intrusive or uncomfortable than having a pap smear. It’s not painful or complicated; successful insemination is just a matter of timing and having the right sperm.

Assisted Reproduction

We also have the option to use the donated sperm in conjunction with assisted reproduction, or in vitro fertilization. With this procedure, we retrieve several eggs from the female partner and fertilize those eggs with the donated sperm. The resulting embryos are transferred into the uterus to achieve pregnancy. This gives the couple a much higher chance of successfully becoming pregnant (compared to conceiving through intercourse alone). We can often complete three to four attempts from a single cycle of eggs, which gives us an overall pregnancy rate of 90 to 100 percent.

Sperm donation is a wonderful option for couples to achieve pregnancy when other options have failed. To make an appointment and learn if sperm donation can help you, visit Arizona Center for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility online or call us at 520-326-0001.

Egg freezing technology has drastically evolved over the last 20 years. At the Arizona Center for Reproduction Endocrinology & Infertility, the procedure has become fairly routine. While it used to be seen as a costly luxury, today, many women are choosing to freeze their eggs as a way to keep their reproduction options open later in life.

Understanding Age & Fertility

Women are more fertile when they are younger, reaching peak fertility at around age 22. Their fertility declines steadily and inexorably until menopause, which occurs at around the age of 50. Starting at age 35, the decline in fertility is much more rapid, and it’s very difficult to get pregnant naturally beyond the mid-40s.

Many women get pregnant at a younger age simply because they’re more fertile and have a large number of healthy eggs to fertilize. As a woman ages, she has fewer eggs and those eggs are much more prone to errors, so things like miscarriages and Down syndrome can become commonplace. 

The “Ideal” Age for a Woman to Freeze Her Eggs

Just because peak fertility is reached at age 22 does not mean every woman needs to freeze her eggs at that age. The ideal age for a woman to freeze her eggs is dependent on her circumstances. It’s difficult for a woman to plan exactly when she intends on starting a family; education, career, and even partner prospects can delay a woman’s decision to get pregnant.

Ideally, a woman would freeze her eggs as young as possible, but it is still a practical option for her up until her mid-30s. The procedure can be done even later than that if the woman decides to freeze and bank multiple cycles of eggs, giving up more to use during in vitro down the line. Once the eggs are frozen, we have a favorable outcome that would allow that woman to have children into even her late-40s. 

Egg Freezing Is Like an Insurance Policy

When a woman decides to freeze her eggs, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to use those eggs to achieve a pregnancy. The eggs are more of an insurance policy that ensures she does have the option to get pregnant when she chooses to do so. They allow her to focus on other aspects of her life until she’s ready to have a child.

Egg freezing doesn’t detract from a woman’s future fertility; the eggs that are retrieved and frozen aren’t at all “wasted” or “used up.” No matter the age we freeze a woman’s eggs, she still retains her fertility up until her mid-30s to early-40s, and oftentimes can still get pregnant at that age. So, a woman who freezes her eggs at an early age still has the option to get pregnant naturally later in life.

If a woman is at an older age when she decides to become pregnant and conceiving naturally is difficult, there are several standard fertility treatments that are helpful in overcoming the challenges of getting pregnant that are associated with age. We can try these fertility-enhancing techniques before we opt to use her frozen eggs. If we can achieve a pregnancy based on those treatments we can save her eggs to have a second or third child later on.

When or if we do use the frozen eggs, they would have to be thawed and fertilized with the woman’s partner’s sperm or a donor’s sperm through the standard in vitro process. The resulting embryos would then be transferred to the uterus to achieve a pregnancy. The in vitro process is actually very successful, and most women get pregnant on the first attempt.

If you have specific questions regarding egg freezing or would like to schedule an appointment for the procedure, contact the Arizona Center for Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility today by calling (520) 326-0001 or visit us online.