HOUSTON – One in six couples experience infertility, according to the World Health Organization.
RELATED: Trump has signed an executive order on IVF. Here’s what you should know about the procedure
While medicine has come a long way to help dreams of creating a family come true, going through fertility treatments (specifically IVF) can cost more than $16,000 per round.
Now a new clinic called Positivf has opened in Houston to offer that treatment at about half the cost.
What is Positivf
They first opened in San Antonio, offering IVF to families without insurance, or those who find it cheaper just to pay out of pocket, and now they’ve opened their doors for the first time in Houston.
“We really want to make high-quality IVF affordable to as many people as possible,” said Beto Paris, the Chief Revenue Officer at Positivf. “Obviously without sacrificing safety and with as good or better quality as anybody else, quality meaning will get you the family that you want.”
He said they’re able to offer IVF cycles starting at around $8,400, which is about half the cost of the industry standard.
How can they cut costs?
He says they primarily eliminate the number of clinical visits required.
“The average visits to treatment, that’s from the first time you see the clinic to when you start treatment, is about six in the industry. That’s the industry standard. We can do it in as little as two visits and then you can start treatment,” Paris explained. “We can do it virtually. Like if there is CPL, like clinical pathology lab to take your blood and do all of those types of tests. If there’s one around, you know, around your house, you don’t need to come to the clinic to do it here. Like, you can do it over there, and we can just take the tests from them.”
Another way the clinic can keep costs down is they won’t accept insurance.
Many patients prefer to pay out-of-pocket, but they can also provide the necessary documentation to submit claims if you do want to use it.
Additionally, the Trump administration said that it plans to come up with a way to lower health insurers’ rates for IVF, although it hasn’t said by how much yet.
