Fertility Success Rates

How (not) To Report Inaccurate IVF Success Rate Data

In any given year, approximately 50% of the IVF clinics that report to SART don’t like this site. We take a lot of heat from some of these clinics. We didn’t create this site for them.

This site was conceived and continues to operate for the benefit of patients who are confused about the data contained in the public reports published by SART and the CDC. Live Birth Rate Per Transfer certainly should NOT be the sole factor in choosing where to pursue fertility treatment, but it does give patients somewhere to start in a deeper examination of all of the available data.

For every complaint from a poor performing clinic, we get six heartfelt emails from patients expressing gratitude for the work we do here. We aren’t going to stop any time soon. So if you work for one of the clinics listed on our site, here are some things you can do BEFORE you send us that email threatening legal action:

  1. Check your facts. Our data comes directly from the SART report. We provide a link from every clinic profile to the corresponding SART report for that clinic. Start by making sure that the numbers are different from our site to what you see on the SART site. This has happened in the past because, despite what they claim, SART updates the data after initially publishing it. If we are using bad data, we want to update it ASAP.
  2. Consider the reporting requirements. Per the SART guidelines, a center must have more than 20 cycles in a segment for their success rates to be considered statistically significant. That means if your center only has 19 cycles for women 38-40, we aren’t going to show those results in our comparative report.
  3. Send specific examples of inaccurate data. Here is an example of an email we just received this morning. For now, the source of this email is going to remain anonymous:”Your website:  Fertilitysuccessrates.com has falsely represented live birth rates for my competitors, and I am planning legal action against your company if this is not corrected immediately.”Which competitors? What is inaccurate? Not much to go on here.
  4. Bonus Tip: Threatening legal action is pretty silly. We are reporting data that is publicly available elsewhere. We are entitled to do this under the law. If you are going to sue, then just do it. Make sure your attorneys are well versed in SLAPP. Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer to avoid lawsuits and we definitely want to correct inaccurate data if it exists. However, blindly threatening lawsuits really wastes everybody’s time.

If you see something that is wrong please contact us and let us know. We do take time to check data for any well documented reports of inaccuracy.

We also take a look at the reporting clinic’s success rates, and profiles on Yelp, RateMD’s, Vitals and a number of public review websites. So far there is a strong correlation between clinics who send spurious threats and negative public opinion about those clinics. That, however, is a post for another time.

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