Choosing your clinic isn’t an easy or straightforward process. As you decide which clinic to pursue, consider these six basic criteria:

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• Location Many intended parents need to travel for their treatment. Know that this will add an extra layer of logistical and financial considerations.

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• Services Whether you’re a same-sex couple searching for egg donation and surrogacy alongside IVF or you’re simply hoping to access fertility testing, make sure that the clinic you select can suit your present and long-term fertility needs. Additional clinic services to look for include Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS), Gender Selection, Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), and Sperm Spinning for HIV-positive intended parents.

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• Pricing Fertility treatment is expensive. Achieving the perfect balance of success rates, patient experience, and cost may require a bit of compromise. Some clinics may prioritise high success rates, potentially leading to longer waiting times and higher costs. Others may offer a more personalised approach with shorter waiting times, but at a premium. Select a clinic that caters to your financial needs and comforts you with a variety of pricing packages, discounts, payment plans, and guidance that can walk you through this journey. Your treatment should be sensitive to your financial constraints yet realistic with the scope of treatment needed.

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• Doctors Fertility treatment can be emotionally challenging, and you deserve the best care possible along your journey. To get a better sense of fertility doctors at each clinic, you can read testimonials and reviews from past patients about their experiences. Note that some fertility clinics provide very limited access to patient-doctor communications, and others allow you to freely talk to your IVF doctors.

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• Facilities Some fertility clinics don’t have their own facilities to perform ultrasounds, egg retrievals, egg freezing, screening, or other critical services along your fertility journey. Make sure to ask about this upfront if you’re in communication with a clinic, as this can add additional time and resources to your journey.

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• Success Rates Every year, the CDC collects and reports on fertility clinic outcomes across the country. Each clinic should openly communicate its success rates. But don’t use this as your sole indicator of which clinics are great-- these variations in success rates can be attributed to a number of factors, including the clinic’s experience, the quality of its laboratory facilities, and the patient’s age and medical history. There are some cutting-edge clinics who are willing to take on more challenging and rare cases, and who have their success rates suffer as a result--make sure to understand the context when reviewing success rates.