Many patients want to travel to Mumbai to do an IVF cycle in our clinic because they know that they will get the best possible medical care. They appreciate the fact that we provide high technology with a high touch, and this combination allows them to maximize their chance of getting pregnant. This blend of competence with compassion is rare, which is why many patients who have failed an IVF cycle and are finally able to differentiate between a good clinic and a bad clinic, seek us out. We create a lot of educational materials to educate IVF patients, and we share this for free online, Patients appreciate our openness and transparency because this helps them to have realistic expectations of IVF treatment.

Many patients have failed an IVF cycle, and are not happy with the local options which are available to them, because most clinics hide information from their patients. They refuse to provide photographs of embryos to their patients and make up all kinds of flimsy excuses to explain the IVF failure. Patients get irritated with this opacity, and while they are keen to come to Mumbai for their treatment, they are worried about the logistics of organizing this. Not only have they heard that Mumbai is an expensive city, it's also hard for them to take so much time off from work. Most patients still think that an IVF treatment takes about 20 days, but in our clinic, we have streamlined our treatment protocol so efficiently, that you only need to spend about 7 – 10 days in Mumbai. Also, because of our tie-up with Gopal Mansion (www.gopalmansion.com), the cost of staying is only Rs 800 per night for a couple in an AC room!

Your treatment can be started locally in your hometown, so the amount of time you spend in Mumbai gets slashed dramatically, without compromising the quality of your care. Most of our patients are well-informed and are comfortable using email to share medical information with us.

I review their medical records, and then send them the treatment plan well in advance, so they can organize their tickets, stay and leave. The husband needs to come for only one day, which makes this even more feasible and convenient.

They can do the Day 2 scan locally in their own hometown in any good ultrasound scan center/ imaging clinic, and they share the images with me as digital images by email. Based on these results, I choose the dose of meds for superovulation, so they need to come down to Mumbai directly on day 7 or day 8. We then do an ultrasound scan to monitor follicular growth and a blood test for E2 ( estradiol) levels. We repeat this every alternate day for 2-3 days, and when the follicles are mature, we go ahead with the egg retrieval, and the patient can then go back to their home after two days. We freeze all the embryos on day 5 and then they need to come back later for a frozen transfer. The time they need to spend in Mumbai for the transfer is only 3-4 days.

Taking a break for 7- 10 days is far easier than taking a break for 20 days, and this option is something we encourage all patients to explore. Because our patients are well informed, they end up getting far better care than patients who just go to the local IVF clinic and do whatever the doctor tells them, because these patients often know nothing about what the doctor is doing, or what the doctor should be doing, as a result of which they end up getting very poor medical care.

Finally, patients are worried that the treatment charges in our clinic are more than what their local IVF clinic charges, but the reality is that the treatment in our clinic is far more cost-effective because our pregnancy rates are so high that they end up actually paying much less for a baby!