Triangle IVF patients travel out-of-state due to high cost of treatment

At 40 years old, Durham mom Crystal Leftdwrige decided she wanted one more child, in addition to her 14-year-old boy.

A single woman, she went to a local clinic to see what her options were.

"I knew I wanted another baby," she said. "So I said, 'You know what? I’m going to do it myself.' I went through three rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination) that my insurance covered here in Raleigh. That didn’t work."

So, her doctor recommended in vitro fertilization (IVF). Leftdwrige was on board – until she saw the price.

"IVF here was like $12,000, $13,000 and beyond, and that was not in my budget," she said. "And they wanted that up front. And you know I just couldn’t afford it, especially being a single mom."

Using Google, she found CNY Fertility in New York.

Leftdwrige is part of a growing number of North Carolinians who are traveling to CNY — with locations in Florida, Colorado, New York, Georgia and Pennsylvania — seeking faster and more affordable care.

The tagline for the clinic, founded in 1997, is "making priceless affordable." For Leftdwrige, that was true. The average cost of services there, according to CNY, is between $4,000 and $7,000.

At Duke Health, a spokesperson says the typical cost is between $15,000 and $18,000.

At UNC Health, it’s between $13,000 and $23,000.

Dr. Shelby Neal, medical director of the Duke Fertility Center, noted that its success rate for "singleton live births" is above the national average.

"Currently, our success rate is nearly 60% for patients younger than 35,,while the national average stands at 46% for that same group. We tackle some of the toughest fertility cases whenever it is safe to do so," Neal wrote in a statement. "Because we provide services in an outpatient clinical setting, there are some instances in which it is not safe to provide sedation for a patient due to certain comorbidities, such as very high body mass index or severe cardiopulmonary disease. These exceptions apply to only a small number of patients.”

CNY representatives told WRAL Investigates that, unlike many clinics, they do not turn any patients away, even for reasons of BMI, prior medical conditions, or age. They noted that negatively impacts their success rate, which is 41.7% for individuals younger than 35, but said they feel it is more important to communicate the odds to patients and allow them to proceed if they so desire.

CNY also boasts a shorter wait time. While getting a fertility appointment with a doctor could take six months at Duke, and a few months at UNC, Leftdwrige says she was seeing her provider and starting the process within two months.

Leftdwrige spent a handful of days in New York for egg retrieval and the embryo transfer, and had her little girl, Bryelle, in North Carolina. She’s now nine months old.

CNY’s founder, Dr. Robert Kiltz, said he keeps prices lower because he believes it’s the right thing to do.

His clinics routinely see patients from all over the world.

"I went into medicine to help people," he said. "That’s all we’re interested in doing, helping people build their families because medicine, in general, is way too expensive. And fertility care is out of reach for 85% of people who need it."

William Kiltz, VP of Marketing and Patient Access at CNY, said the average IVF patient’s household in the U.S. has an annual income of $180,000 a year. At CNY, the average is $70,000.

"[IVF is] usually not covered by insurance," he said. "People refinance their homes, they get second jobs, they do all this stuff to afford treatment. So, we try to provide access for the everyday, average American."

As of 2021, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that 100,000 babies had been born in the U.S. that year through IVF.

William Kiltz said the clinic has noticed a surge in interest in IVF that, he estimates, has doubled in the last five years.

Medical experts attribute that to families waiting longer to have children, since fertility tends to decline with age.