Doctors leaving UW fertility clinic

SEATTLE – All four doctors at the region’s largest infertility clinic – the Fertility and Endocrine Center at the University of Washington Medical Center – are leaving to start a private operation.

Their move is backed by a fast-growing, national, for-profit company, the Seattle Times reported Saturday.

It may be the first time an entire service has left the UW Medical Center. The development will shut down the Fertility and Endocrine Center on Sept. 24, school officials said.

The doctors’ new enterprise, Seattle Reproductive Medicine, will be in the South Lake Union area in a facility equipped by their partner, IntegraMed of Purchase, N.Y., which has committed $3.2 million.

They’re not the first. Across the country, several in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics have moved from academic medical centers to private practice, said Dr. David Eschenbach, chairman of the UW Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

“It’s very enticing to do IVF, in terms of money,” Eschenbach said. The monetary rewards tend to be “much better in the private world than in the academic center.”

Dr. Michael Soules, who began the UW’s program in 1984, said bureaucracy and skimpy staff support prompted the move by him and the other three specialists

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” he said.

He cited understaffing, complex billing arrangements, computer systems “that don’t talk to each other,” and long waits for appointments that were difficult for patients and frustrating for the physicians.

Soules said the balance among patient care, research and teaching began to falter when two doctors left the clinic last year, leaving just him and colleagues Nancy Klein, Angela Thyer and Paul Lin.

“All we found ourselves doing was full-time clinical practice,” he said – performing 400 IVF treatments per year, and handling paperwork and other tasks that in private practice would by handled by staff.

For example, he said, the new operation will have five full-time managers handling work now done by a UW clinic manager working 80 percent of the time.

The clinic’s growing success rate for creating pregnancies – 60 to 70 percent for women under 40 – built the center into the region’s largest IVF provider.

“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished,” Soules said. But as word got around and business grew, patients weren’t getting the customer service they or their doctors wanted. “Our success rates are what did us in.”

As they considered the switch, Soules said, he and the others looked at other operations and found patients were happier and doctors “less stressed” when there was more staff and a “more efficient practice.”

The increased support staff will free the doctors to see more patients, and “do more cycles” – fertility lingo for the attempts at artificially created pregnancy.

The UW clinic does about 400 “cycles” per year, each costing $9,000 to $10,000. About 80 percent of the billing is paid privately, not by insurance.

The doctors would own 80 percent of the clinic and have made a five-year commitment to IntegraMed, the nation’s largest fertility-services company, Soules said.

The change should work for patients, too, he said.

“There will be more access; they won’t have to wait eight to 10 weeks for a new appointment,” he said.

Soules said he expects prices to be about the same, or possibly lower.

Since 1984, the UW clinic has used IVF to help create more than 1,000 babies, Soules said. Doctors there see more than 1,200 patients a year for all reproductive issues.

The UW has set up a special telephone line for patients with questions about the closing of its Fertility and Endocrine Center: (206) 598-7482.