Sometimes, having it all is just about good planning. For the 21st century woman looking to balance her personal and professional life, timing can be everything. And now, there’s a new company to help stretch that timing just a bit more. Extend Fertility Medical Practice is branded as “a one-of-a-kind, specialty egg-freezing practice” in New York City. By offering egg-freezing services at lower prices, Extend Fertility promises a way to accommodate the lifestyle and goals of women looking to start a family … later. As of last Thursday, Extend Fertility opened its state-of-the-art egg-freezing laboratory, allowing the facility to freeze patients’ eggs immediately upon reception. This achievement marks the first-ever fully operational practice dedicated to preserving women’s fertility in the U.S.
“Currently most practices that offer egg freezing are more focused on providing solutions for infertility,” says Ilaina Edison, co-founder and CEO of Extend Fertility. “We felt that women who are preserving their eggs for the future deserved their own dedicated space and a revolutionary goal-focused pricing model that makes egg freezing more affordable and accessible.”
How much more affordable? Extend Fertility offers its services at about half of the standard market price. Moreover, its pricing model allows women to freeze a minimum of 12 eggs, which represents a year’s worth of fertility through the course of four cycles. This, the company says, represents “a significant departure from existing pricing models, which charge per cycle.”
Furthermore, the Cryotec method Extend Fertility uses promises a near 100 percent survival rate of oocytes. “The Cryotec process is superior to its slower predecessors, which introduced more opportunities for errors that can destroy the viability of stored eggs by damaging their cellular structure,” Embryology Laboratory Assistant Director Dr. Leslie Ramirez said.
But it’s not just cost and effectiveness that differentiates Extend Fertility from the competition. By placing a great emphasis on customer service, the company hopes to create “a personal experience in a dedicated space to encourage women to feel welcomed, comfortable and confident throughout the entire experience.” Patients will be guided by a personal Fertility Advisor throughout each step of the process, starting from a phone consultation through egg retrieval and recovery.
“Although social norms have evolved over the years and many people now choose to have children later in life, our biological clocks have stayed the same,” co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Joshua Klein said. “Fertility begins to decline quite meaningfully around age 30, and rapidly each year or two in the mid-to-late 30s. We are seeing more and more women seeking to preserve their fertility options through egg freezing, and as a clinical team, we welcome the opportunity to serve as a fertility specialist helping them save eggs for future use.”
Article originally published September 2016. Updated on 02-20-2017 by Lulu Chang: Added news of Extend Fertility’s full functionality.
