Northwestern Medicine Center for Fertility and Reproductive Medicine Chicago

Thank you so much for helping me to make my dream of having a family come true! The best gift I could ever ask for! Dr Tarun Jain was my doctor in 2019 I gave birth to beautiful healthy son and now (41 years old) in 2024 he helped me be blessed with healthy beautiful daughter!!! I was one in million cases....I decided to have a child on my own after my husband passed away...I felt like he really cared and supported my decisions...Dr Tarun Jain was extremely understanding and empathetic throughout the entire process. He took his time to review the options and provide proposals for next steps. Always keeping in mind based on science what is possible. The most I love seeing him taking his time to personally congratulate me for giving the birth to my kids.... I did and I will definitely recommend him as a high ranking professional and the best doctor ever!!!!!

We decided to try several cycles of fertility treatments here. At first we liked it, the staff was very friendly and nice with us, but in the end it seemed that our doctor absolutely does not deal with us, we had to write several times a day to get answers and instructions and often they still didn’t respond.Generally the process is this, they tell you to come in for tests (blood tests and ultrasounds). Some technician does the tests, and usually they don’t say anything about what they see or even what they’re looking for. Then a few days later, a nurse from the clinic sends you a message on mychart telling you the next steps. There’s barely any detail if at all about what the tests showed, just a sentence or two about the next step. We met “our” doctor exactly once on a video call at the beginning and never heard from her again, all the correspondence was with a series of nurses we never met.In the first cycle, we did an IUI when my follicle grew to the right size, but the doctor for some reason decided not to do an injection of ovidrel after the IUI (even though we had the medicine at home), which would provide me with 100% egg output. As a result, I believe that the ovulation was much later than the IUI. Their reason for not giving the ovidrel was one of MANY unanswered questions, they never explained it.After some hesitation we decided to try another cycle, and asked them to provide us with more detail this time, explaining test results and their treatment decisions. In this cycle, we were prescribed very expensive drugs (almost $1800) for stimulation, which we bought from their pharmacy. I had to do injections in my belly every day, but in the end my body did not respond. A blood test showed low estradiol levels and an ultrasound showed follicles weren’t developing. Suddenly I got a message from a nurse telling me they were canceling the cycle because of the lack of progress. And again they didn’t respond to any follow up questions. Why couldnt I be prescribed the hormone estradiol to help the follicles grow and complete this IUI cycle?! Of course, we asked them this question, but we never got the answer. A week later I went for an ultrasound at another clinic and it turned out that there had been an ovulation. Another missed opportunity.It seems that they do not need a positive result, and they need to endlessly extract money from patients. They ruined two cycles for us and didnt even apologize, they still send us invoices for payment. I dont recommend this clinic ... Dont waste your precious time and health!

Awful. Wanted to be a surrogate and I am medically “perfect” and they wouldn’t allow me to because I recently lost my job and said the stress from that is not aligning with what they want

To say we have had a positive experience would be an understatement. My relationship with REI at Northwestern began in 2018 with Dr. Lia Bernardi and resulted in the birth of our now 3 year old son via IVF. We are now pregnant with our second child after another successful IVF transfer under the care of Dr. Lia Bernardi. I have had a wonderful experience with the nurses, on call providers, APNs, other fertility docs, and truly the whole clinic. I cant speak highly enough about this clinic. They always took the time to answer my questions, made me feel like I mattered, took my concerns seriously, and helped us create our family. Thank you all.

Depending who takes your appointment at the check in desk at FRM Fertility Reproductive Medicine you may get treated rudely and talked to as if your incompetent or unintelligent. Usually the ladies sitting at Desk #3 are extremely sweet,helpful, respectful and courteous. During my appointments I can always hear Desk #1 & #2 talk bad about the patients they were just talking to over the phone. These two desks 1 & 2 use dialogue unfit for a workplace, 1 of the ladies is always eating at her desk and taking my info and talking to me with food in her mouth. The smell of cigarettes is also noticable which is unacceptable in a hospital or medical setting. Dr. Jungheim is an excellent and a very nice and easy to talk to person, she makes the experience pleasant. Male patients are at this clinic as they are giving specimen samples to help create life. Ive seen reviews stating its Eww that so many men were at the clinic on a particular day. Its very normal for male patients to be alone in the waiting area at FRM.

Dr. Taryn Jain was my dr. But procedure was performed by Jessica R. Walter, MD and Jen Bakkensen, MD, they both are the best and amazing dr. Thank you so much for giving me best gift of my life, I had 2 failed IUIs and 1 failed fresh frozen off with FCI Clinic, switched to Northwestern hospital and found most amazing dr.

Very surprised by the reviews. Everyone that I have interacted with has been top tier, all of the nurses were super nice, I had pleasant experience with reception, no issues scheduling or monitoring. Because of NWM I finally felt seen and a validation of the cause (endo) which had been written off by so many doctors up until this point. Hopeful for the future and would gladly recommend doctors Boots, Jungheim, and Feinberg.

Please save yourself a lot of precious time and frustration and DO NOT seek fertility treatment at Northwestern. They are solely concerned with their success rate and making money, not providing care. The last straw was a $100 8 minute tele-med visit where the doctor wasnt interested in anything but pushing the use of a donor egg. And when we left to find a more helpful practice, they have REPEATEDLY sent the wrong and incomplete medical records. I wish zero stars was an option.

Horrible! You are a number there, nothing more. In the fertility world, timing of appointments is crucial. They have so many patients that it was difficult to get appointments on time. Sometimes I had to drive to the north shore to be seen on time. Beyond the first meeting, expect zero interaction with your doctor. One time I insisted on speaking with my doctor because there was a medication change and I was scared that it would hurt my outcome. When she finally called, she said, “If I called all of my patients back I would never get anything done.” That says it all about how they feel about you. The final straw was when they let me go an extra week on hormones because they dismissed one of my levels as a lab error. Apparently it is normal practice to accept lab errors at Northwestern without simply calling you in to retest. I am at a top boutique clinic now. I have my accomplished, kind doctor’s cell phone number. I’ve been diagnosed with a condition that they completely missed at Northwestern. Northwestern retrieved 5 eggs and my new clinic retrieved 36. 36!!! Don’t be fooled by the Northwestern name. Save yourself a lot of stress and go elsewhere.

This review is also for suite 2450. This hospital is so unorganized. I am going for a 2nd opinion in gynecology. They send me to do MRI and I had the hardest time scheduling the appointment with them so I go to a place near me. The nurse, Lisa, says to upload the images to my chart. Once I put the disc in the computer there were 300+ images. There is no way I could download and upload that many images. So I call and they said they were open on Saturday. So I go may 15 at 9:40 am. I had a bad encounter with the security guard on the 1st floor and 2nd floor. One randomly selected people to put on their masks and sanitize their hands and the other gave bad directions. Once I reach the gynecology office I gave them my MRI disc. Tell me why they said they will give it to my Dr on Monday and today I get a call that they havent received them. The nurse Karissa says if they cant locate them I would have to reschedule my appointment. I dont understand why I would have to reschedule my appointment when Ive had surgery and ultrasounds that could help him give me a second opinion. Im starting to get the impression that northwestern isnt as great as it was or what its said to be.

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 arent 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 NWs 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 dont 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 Northwesterns 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, Ive 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 cant 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 dont 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 its the first time they are doing things. Its just unbelievable. I asked several times for the practice director to call me to no success. They simply do not care. Ive 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 hadnt 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 thats completely cold hearted, uncaring, incompetent, negligent and rude.

NW REI is not the place if you are interested in a personalized treatment plan. They do not take the time to understand your situation and customize treatment to increase your chances for a successful outcome. I was a patient with this business for a period of 18 months. Struggled with scheduling, getting meds on time, receiving clear instructions on basic things like a COVID test. Unfortunately it was our loss and waste of time, energy and money. Advice as we decided to discontinue our treatment was there are other smaller facilities which have good success why dont you try there instead?REALLYY?!!Dont fall for brand names like NWH. Its not how large the organization is. You want to be around a team of specialists and caregivers who want you to be successful in this already difficult journey. Good luck if you are reading this!

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.

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 didnt 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.

Dr. Kazer, Dr Jain and staff,Thank you so much for helping to make our dream of having a family come true! The best gift we could ever ask for! At age 40, I delivered our twins! A baby girl Weighing 6 pounds 2 oz. and a baby boy weighing 5 pounds 13oz at 38.2 weeks. All the staff here were kind, empathetic, and prompt with returning my messages. Highly recommend Northwestern fertility! Never give up hope, stay positive, pray for it every day, and tell yourself “I will have a baby”!:).

After 10 years of infertility and 8 miscarriages I thank God along my side I had Dr.Milad, Dr.Pavone and other RE’s that were awesome and helped me thru my painful years of infertility but because of them today I have a beautiful 7 month old baby girl and I’m the happiest women on earth. So thank you so much for all you guys do for people that have struggled the way I did. People reading this never give up cuz I sure didn’t and trust me it was painful but oh so worth it at the end.

We were treated with care, kindness, and respect. We left our first consultation feeling relief, as the team of doctors and nurses was so reassuring and gave us options. They explained everything clearly and in plain English, without condescension. Highly recommend Dr. Jain and the great team here.

We had such a terrible experience with Dr. Jared Robins. No children at 35 because of what we went through. After going to another clinic and witnessing their protocol, we were shocked at how in our opinion, Northwestern failed us, from medication dosing to retrieval and embryo creation. I do not recommend Dr. Robins at all.

I delivered twins at 42 after 4 rounds of retrieval only getting 1-3 viable eggs each time. This was my 5th and final round. Dr. Kazer didn’t give up on me, but didn’t give me false hope either. The clinic is incredibly efficient and all the staff there knew me.

The ‘financial advisor’ lied and I was pressured to do testing that I had already done a few months before. I ended up with a 8k bill and it completely ruined my intention of using them. Worst decision I ever made was making an appointment.

Dr Barnes was the best, unfortunately he is no longer working as a doctor. I was bounced around with no one who took the time to be personal with you and your experience. Over 2 years dealing with this office consistently and after finally being done they completely ignore your messages when needing certain information.

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

You see the Dr just at the onset of your treatment. While you are disparately asking to see the Dr the nurses try to convince you that everything is under their control.It is almost impossible to talk to nurses over the phone even when you are under heavy pain. You have to leave a message or my chart them. Just God knows when they call you.

The woman answering the phones is rude , I cannot believe women trying to get pregnant have to go through this type of treatment … they are 6 months booked out for any new patients for the fertility department and they were quick to bring up payments and I haven’t said 2 words… would definitely stay away

Ashley at the front desk (answering the phones) was so helpful, patient, and kind! I had questions and she stayed on the phone with me to help me complete a step I needed to complete before my visit. Thank you for your help and your kindness today.

The people calling this office are usually struggling to get pregnant. You would think they would have a nice polite person answering the phones.I will no longer be visiting this location due to the terrible phone experience.

The front desk staff are so good to me and having patient for all my questions. Putting me through for everything. Thank you so much for your help

I dont even have enough time or words in the world to write what this practice has meant to me. Dr. Confino, who devoted his life to the hundreds of births he made happen...will always hold a special place in our hearts!!!!

Thank you for giving us the world! After 3 years of trying and failing, its my pleasure to tell you that we had a baby boy Thursday, keep up the great work!