Tool
Clinic intro-call kit
Before your round of clinic calls: the questions worth asking, what to listen for in the answers, and a self-tour of the donor database. Mark and jot as you go, compare at the end. Everything is saved in your browser only.
How it works
- Add a clinic before each call.
- During the call, pick the clinic you're speaking with at the top and work through the questions — a mark plus space for what they answered.
- Once you get donor-database access, fill in the self-tour: the part no call can replace.
- At the end — a full per-question comparison across all clinics, with print / save as PDF.
Add your first clinic to begin.
The donor pool
- How many active donors are in your database right now? How many are available to start immediately?A current, absolute number — not “we have plenty”.
- Do you also work with external donor banks? What does that change for us — cost, timing, responsibility?
- If we've chosen a donor and transferred funds, and she fails screening or backs out at any point before retrieval — what happens?
- If we need an additional retrieval to create enough embryos — what's the right path in your view?
Add a clinic to start filling in answers.
Embryos & planning ahead
The key question here isn't how many embryos you'll get — it's what happens the day they run out.
- On average, how many normal embryos come out of one egg-donor retrieval cycle?
- If we run out of embryos — how does a repeat cycle work? At what cost? Can it be with the same donor?This is the answer most worth getting in writing.
- What is your transfer policy — how many embryos per transfer, and where do you stand on transferring two?
- Storage: what does a year cost, and what happens if we want to move embryos to another clinic or another country?
- PGT-A testing — included? Required here? And what's your approach to mosaic embryos?
Add a clinic to start filling in answers.
Packages & money
- What exactly is included in the package — and what isn't? (Medication? PGT-A? Storage? First year only?)
- If there's a guarantee package — what are the entry conditions, how many cycles are included, and what exactly is refunded, when?The guarantee's fine print is the document most worth reading.
- What is the payment schedule along the way?
Add a clinic to start filling in answers.
Care & communication
- Who is our primary point of contact at the clinic throughout the process?
- Shipping frozen sperm versus giving a sample during a clinic visit — what do you recommend and why?
- What is your live birth rate with egg donors, in general terms?An order of magnitude is enough. No need to drown in statistics on an intro call.
Add a clinic to start filling in answers.
Self-tour of the donor database
This part isn't asked — it's experienced. Get access to the database, spend fifteen minutes in it, and mark what you found. The database experience is one you'll live with for months.
- Is there enough information on each donor to actually decide?
- Is there information on her previous donations — and their outcomes?
- Once a donor is chosen — does she come off the database, or is she still shown to other couples?
- What's the price range between donors — and is it clear what drives the gap?
- Are there costs beyond the donor's fee (travel, insurance, an external agency)?
- Is there video of the donor? Childhood photos? Recent photos?
- Is it easy to filter and search? Did you save favourites — and did they stay saved?
- Did you feel pushed to choose fast — or given room to breathe?
Add a clinic to start filling in answers.
Filled it in? Let's go over it together.
A good comparison raises new questions. I've been going over tables like this with parents for years — a short call can prevent an expensive wrong turn.