Denied a hip replacement at age 80, man gets what he needs in Costa Rica

MedVacation does not offer orthopedic surgery procedures. Nevertheless, we thought the article was great and spoke about the quality of work available outside the U.S.

To learn more about other procedures visit us at www.theMedVacation.com.

By Ilene Little / Aug 10

http://www.escapefromamerica.com/2010/08/hip-replacement-in-costa-rica-after-denied-in-usa/

On June 30^th, an eighty old year man denied a hip replacement in the U.S. got the surgery he needed in Costa Rica.

That’s the story you’re hearing here from Bill Buiten, a Biscayne Bay, FL. Resident who sought surgical relief for hip pain he had suffered for 25 years as a result of falling off a ladder in 1985.  He claims he was turned down by more than 10 orthopedic surgeons.

Why?  Buiten says he can only guess at why, and “I certainly can’t prove it, but it became pretty clear to me that:

1. Part of the reason, depending upon which surgeon you were talking about, they didn’t want to do any surgery on me is because I was a Medicare patient and surgeons don’t get paid very well by Medicare;  and so they just push off the Medicare patients with various excuses.
2. My age was used as an excuse not to do the surgery, and
3. My case was atypical.  The x-rays don’t quite look the way they want to see it; so they’ve got another excuse for not doing it.”

“It wasn’t a bone on bone situation they like to see in an X ray”, he explained, “I had synovitis and the orthopedic surgeons have such a narrow focus that they don’t want to hear or see anything that’s unusual.  And if it is unusual they don’t want to mess with it.”

This is harsh condemnation, but nevertheless I think when you listen to the podcast of this interview you will hear Buiten’s sincerity and won’t dismiss him as someone who just has an axe to grind.

Click here to download audio Interview with Mr. Buiten

Buiten’s was trained as a chemical engineer and over a period of years owned several businesses – and his ability to articulate in the interview gives you an honest perspective.

Call it Medical Tourism, Medical Travel – or more accurately Travel for Surgical Procedures

What’s really important here is that Buiten did find a surgeon – he just had to go out of the country to find one.  And according to Buiten, that surgeon, Dr. Oscar Valverde, said, “that surgery should have been done years ago.”

Buiten said Valverde told him, “‘Your hip was bad.  It was pretty messy.  If you couldn’t get it done in the States it’s a good thing we’re doing it here because it really needed replacing.  Your self-diagnosis was right on the money.  The whole joint was full of fluid and it was that fluid that was eating up the joint and also giving you the pain.  It was atypical but it definitely needed doing as long as it had been painful for all those years’.”

How to Find a Doctor in Costa Rica

Buiten did his own research on the internet.  “I did what I usually do in trouble, I go to the internet and did my own research.  I punched in terms for medical services in Costa Rica,” said Buiten.

“I goggled medical tourism.  There was a phone number to call and I called it and I got this guy, Tim Morales, the owner of CostaRicanMedicalCare”, said Buiten, “He explained he was a facilitator and that if I had a need to go to Costa Rica he could help.  He asked me ‘What do you need?’ and told me he’d call the hospital and have them contact me.”

One day after talking to Morales, the hospital in Costa Rica contacted Buiten.  They exchanged several emails, and he emailed the hospital his completed health history.  The doctor reviewed his records and accepted him as a candidate for surgery which Buiten was able to schedule for the very next week.

Morales arranged for Buiten to have his surgery at La Católica Hospital where one of the uniques is the onsite Hotel Católica owned by the hospital.  Buiten and his wife, Bernice, never had to leave the combined hospital hotel grounds during their 10-day stay.

Comparison of Customer Service

Buiten told us he is truly amazed by the personal care and consideration he received in Costa Rica.

“Everything went smoothly,” said Buiten, “My wife and I flew down from Miami, arriving in Costa Rica on Monday, June 28^th.  “On Tuesday they did the pre-opt, and on Wednesday they did the surgery.  I spent two days in the hospital and eight days in the Hotel Católica for post-op recovery.”

“Here in the U.S. the pre-op takes a month; they shoo you from one testing lab to another and the doctor has to review it and it literally takes close to a month before you can get anything done,” said Buiten.

“Our doctors work so hard at not getting sued that if they need two tests they do 10,” commented Buiten, “In Costa Rica it took a day.  They went through it very systematically and they got me in for prep for the surgery about 2 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon.”

“During my interview before surgery with Dr. Valverde I told him that all of my adult life my right leg has been about 3/8” shorter than my left leg.  He told me he might be able to do something about that,” said Buiten.

“After surgery I was complaining that the muscles in my groin were really sore and I didn’t know why.  ‘Oh’, he said, ‘I know why, I made your right leg 3/8” longer and those muscles don’t like it’.  I really appreciated that,” Buiten said.

“It was really as pleasant an experience as they could make it.  I was on my feet in two days,” said Buiten, “And the doctor gave me his cell phone number and email address.  He encouraged me to contact him directly with any questions.”

Tim Morales called me the day after I got home to see how it was going and ask if there was anything else he could do,” said Buiten, “I didn’t expect that.”

“And by the way, the people there at the Hotel Católica couldn’t have been nicer,” said Buiten, “They even visited me in the hospital while I was there.  And the hotel staff, it didn’t matter what we asked for, they were always willing to help – day and night – and if we didn’t go to them, they would come to our room.”

In stark contrast to the way he was treated in Costa Rica, Buiten called his family doctor, a few days after his return to the States, to ask his advice on where he should go to get his stitches removed.

“I wasn’t even allowed to talk to the doctor, even though I’m his patient,” said Buiten, “The receptionist said they didn’t offer that service and when I asked her to ask the doctor, she relayed the message from him that I should go find a surgeon or go to the Emergency room. “

“I wasn’t comfortable with a 5-6 hour emergency room wait so I requested that she ask the doctor about going to an urgent care center,” Buiten said.  “I got a message from the receptionist on my phone saying the doctor didn’t’ know anything about urgent care centers but I could try one if I wanted or go to the emergency room.”

“That was the sum total of how they treated me,” said Buiten, “so I found an urgent care center on my own.  It was just absolutely the opposite of how I was treated in Costa Rica.”

Medical Cost in Costa Rica

“If they had told me it was $50,000, I would have written the check because I felt like I absolutely needed to do this,” said Buiten.

“For the surgery and the couple of days in the Hospital Católica the bill was $11,500 – which was a bargain as far as I was concerned,” he said, “The plane tickets for my wife and me totaled about $800, and the Hotel Católica bill was just short of $1,600 for the two of us –  for two weeks and three meals a day for each of us.”

Two important take-aways:

1. Had Buiten not done his own research or allowed himself to be dissuaded by any number of experts, he would have had to settle for a lesser quality lifestyle by far, and
2. This story is a great case in point that there are many seniors – and certainly Baby Boomers – who are Internet savvy – and it’s a mistake to underestimate their resolve and their skills.

Buiten’s dogmatic determination paid off with a successful outcome.  His self-diagnosis was corroborated by the condition of his hip joint revealed during surgery.  That has to feel good.

MedVacation Launches New IVF Service To Offer Overseas Delivery of Embryos to Local IVF Clinics

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MedVacation Launches New In-Vitro Fertilizaion Service
Offers Overseas Delivery of Embryos to Local IVF Clinics in the U.S.

Premier medical tourism services provider MedVacation LLC now offers service that allows its clients to use MedVacation partner clinic’s egg donors and client’s sperm to create a couple’s own embryos. The embryos are then delivered to a client’s local IVF clinic in the U.S. for embryo transfer. 

July 22, 2010 – Denver, Colorado, USA – MedVacation announced today the launch of a new In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) service that allows couples considering donor egg IVF cycles to use overseas donors while having embryo transfers performed in their local fertility clinics. 

“We are extremely excited to offer this important fertility service to our busy American clients who want to expand their families through affordable donor egg IVF cycles from our reputable clinics abroad,” announced MedVacation’s CEO Taras Kuzin. 

Unlike Europeans, Americans do not typically have 28 days of vacation per year, explained Kuzin.  Although some patients may reduce the number of days spent abroad by way of initial ovulation stimulation by a local OBGYN doctor, a typical IVF protocol would require a 17-day stay abroad.  “The length of the required stay has been one of the biggest impediments for Americans who don’t have long vacations,” added Kuzin.

MedVacation’s new service offering allows hopeful parents to use MedVacation partner clinics’ egg donors to create their own embryos. The embryos can then be delivered to the client’s own local IVF clinic in the U.S. for a subsequent embryo transfer.

The advantages of this service are numerous, according to Lisa Burg, MedVacation’s Marketing Advisor.  “An average donor egg cycle can cost $25,000 in the United States,” she explained. “MedVacation’s affordable $9,999 Local IVF Clinic Delivery package offers great savings.” 

In addition, there is no waiting for egg donors from MedVacation’s U.S.-accredited international fertility clinics.  And clients who have difficulties traveling abroad or are not able to travel at all are able to use their local IVF clinics for transfer(s) and never leave the United States.

Kuzin explained that the process is not only more affordable and convenient, but also offers the highest quality service for eager parents.  He explains: The U.S. patient selects a suitable donor from MedVacation’s list of egg donors.  The male partner makes arrangements with a local clinic to collect and process semen.  After collection, the semen sample is cryogenically frozen and sent to MedVacation’s clinic for intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI.  MedVacation’s partner clinic stimulates the egg donor, retrieves eggs, and performs insemination.  Once embryos reach optimum size and meet the embryologist’s criteria, they are delivered to the client’s local IVF clinic. “At that point the couple and their own reproductive endocrinologist from their local clinic plan a date for an embryo transfer,” said Kuzin.

To commemorate the launch of this new service, for a limited time MedVacation offers $500 discounts for the first 100 clients.

About MedVacation, LLC

MedVacation is a Denver-based premier medical tourism services provider that offers high quality procedures at a 30-50% discount to U.S. prices.  The company offers full service, door-to-door medical procedure-based trips for clients who wish to travel to Latin America to receive healthcare services of quality comparable to U.S treatments for a fraction of the.  MedVacation focuses on four segments: 1) In Vitro Fertilization treatments, 2) elective plastic surgery procedures for which medical travel represent superior value, 3) dental procedures such as titanium dental implants, crowns and denture implants, and 4) inpatient alcohol and drug addiction treatments.

For Additional Information Contact:

MedVacation, LLC
Tel:  (720) 837-2378
info@theMedVacation.com
www.theMedVacation.com

###

Great CNNMoney Article about Dental Toruism in Mexico

Without a doubt, high quality dental work is available outside the U.S. In fact, this is how we started our company. The only advice that we would offer to folks considering dental treatments in Mexico is make sure you travel to a safe place. We don’t have to tell anybody about safety issues related to drug wars in the bordering states in Mexico.

For cut-rate dental care, head to Mexico
By Eilene Zimmerman, contributing writer

TIJUANA (CNNMoney.com) — A good smile can be a pricey proposition in the U.S., where barely half the population has dental insurance and routine procedures can run up four-figure bills. Want a porcelain crown for a damaged tooth? That’ll cost $945, on average.

Or you can step across the U.S. border and cut your tab to $250.

That’s the going rate for a crown at DentiCenter, a small but growing chain of full-service dental centers lining the U.S. border along California, Arizona and Texas. DentiCenter’s six outposts are located in Mexico, but 97% of its patients come from the U.S.

Founded by Juan Eng, a USC-trained periodontist from the Baja peninsula who became a U.S. citizen seven years ago, DentiCenter opened its doors in 1991 and now faces record demand for its services. Its roster of patients has more than doubled since 2007. Last year, revenue topped $2 million. For 2010, Eng projects sales of around $3 million.

“The recession definitely helped, because people needed to save money, and the spread the word about us,” Eng says.

Americans are increasingly willing to head across the border in search of a deal. Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions research group, estimates that dental tourism is increasing about 20% a year — and the typical consumer is a middle-income American with insurance.

“These are not the underserved,” he says. “These are people whose out-of-pocket expenses hit their discretionary spending very, very hard. They are trying to juggle health care costs with groceries, transportation and housing.”

To attract American clients, Eng set out to make his practice mirror their experience in the U.S. His office in Tijuana, just a few hundred yards from the San Ysidro border at the edge of San Diego, is modern and immaculately clean, with nine bright, comfortable exam rooms. It looks and feels like a typical U.S. dental office — except that the staff is Mexican and bilingual.

Eng knew acceptance from American insurers would be necessary if he wanted to build a sizeable American clientele, so he became certified as an in-network provider for Delta Dental and Aetna. And to appease Americans concerned about Mexico’s reputation for crime, he locates his offices right at the U.S. border, often within sight of the crossing.

The price-drop that border crossing buys is sizeable: DentiCenter’s services cost about one-third of what they would in the U.S. A comprehensive orthodontic treatment runs around $5,600 in the U.S. At DentiCenter, the price tag tops out at $1,500. Nereda Cuevas, an orthodontia patient at the Tijuana office who stopped in to have her wires adjusted, said her braces cost $1,500; her out-of-pocket costs were $500.

How does Eng keep his prices so low? His dentists — he employs 38, several of them specialists — earn about one-third what a U.S. dentist nets, which averages $205,960, according to the American Dental Association.

Eng also cut costs by bringing in-house — at Mexican prices — many of the services other dental offices purchase from outside vendors, like manufacturing supplies and processing claims. “I spent years gradually expanding the business this way, in order to reduce costs and compete in the U.S. market,” Eng says.

His umbrella company, EEA (Eng Especialisto Associado) Dental Support Services in Chula Vista, Calif., includes DentiCenter, the service-delivery business; a DentiCenter pharmacy; Patrian, for processing insurance claims; and Promedent, a dental supply and equipment company. EEA even operates its own marketing company, and Eng is part-owner of Moreno Lab in Tijuana, which produces products like crowns, bridges, veneers and dentures.

To ensure that service and quality in his offices are consistent, Eng requires his dentists to go through a three-year residency program he developed. A Big Brother-like panel of television screens adorns the wall of his office, each showing different, live views of exam rooms in all six DentiCenter offices, so Eng can keep an eye on things from afar.

There will soon be more TV screens on that office wall. DentiCenter is preparing to open two new offices this year, one near El Paso, Texas, and the other near Nogales, Ariz. Eng’s master plan includes expanding to 14 full-service dental offices.

Deloitte’s Keckley thinks there will be plenty of business to keep them busy.

“I don’t think this is going to end with the end of the recession,” he says of the surge in dental tourism. “The cost of healthcare is becoming a major problem in every household. This is a trend, not a fad.”

What To Expect During IVF Treatment Cycle

IVF Protocol

Once in a while our clients ask us what typically happens during an IVF cycle and how many days does it take. Even though every clinic’s IVF protocol is slightly different and infertility treatments are adjusted for a couple’s individual needs, here is what takes place during a typical IVF treatment cycle broken down by day.

Day 1: AM Dose 20 units of Lupron to be injected. PM Dose 300u of Gonal F and 150 of HMG. [First Day of heavy menses a baseline ultrasound is needed, to rule out ovarian cyst and view of antrial follicle count. Estradial blood test required as well.]
Day 2: AM Dose 20 units of Lupron to be injected. PM Dose 300u of Gonal F and 150 of HMG.
Day 3: AM Dose 20 units of Lupron to be injected. PM Dose 300u of Gonal F and 150 of HMG.
Day 4: AM Dose *IMPORTANT* Lupron reduces to 10 units starting today until the end of treatment. Ultrasound and estradial blood test are needed [Depending on Estradial result & ultrasound, dose change will be given for Day 4 and Day 5.]
Day 6: Ultrasound and estradial blood test are needed [Depending on estradial result & ultrasound, dose change will be given for Day 6, Day 7.]
Day 8: Ultrasound and estradial blood test are needed [Depending on Estradial result & ultrasound, dose change will be given for Day 8 & Day 9.]
Day 9: Tentative Ultrasound and estradial blood test
Day 10: Possible Day of HCG, decision is based on how you respond to treatment
Day 11: Start antibiotic in PM. No visit, no injectable medications, no ultrasound.
Day 12: Oocyte Retrieval, Sperm is needed.
Day 13: Fertilization check & report back to patient
Day 14: Embryos are not disturb
Day 15: Day 3 Embryo Transfer
Day 18: Patient is OK to travel 3 days after transfer
Day 26: Progesterone and Estradial blood test
Day 29: Pregnancy Test! Beta HCG, repeat Progesterone and Estradial test.

Call us today for a free consultation with a doctor and our affordable IVF package details or click here to get started.

(877) 365-5135
http://www.theMedVacation.com

Extracting Teeth Prior To Putting Dental Implants In

Extracting Teeth & Waiting Before Putting Dental Implants In

We were recently asked whether it would be OK for a patient to extract teeth here in the US prior to her trip to our office. That is, the patient wanted to extract her teeth, wait a few days, and then travel to our clinic later to put implants in. Our doctors do not recommend this type of arrangements.

It is not recommended to have teeth extracted and then wait a few days to put implants in. Typically, after an extraction, one must wait around 3 months before putting implants in. The patient may also experience some bone loss there, if the implant is not put in right away. Therefore, we either extract the teeth in our clinic, or the patient has to wait a few months in the States, if he or she does extractions here.

Insurance and Medical Treatments Overseas

Insurance Reimbursement for Medical Procedures Abroad

A number of our clients asked us whether MedVacation would take insurance from their insurance companies. The answer to this question is “it depends!” We will happily provide you with the information that we currently have about insurance companies. Moreover, we would like to mention some other tools like Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA) that you can use to pay for your medical treatments outside the U.S.

Today, a very small number of health insurance companies in the States will reimburse you for your medical procedures performed outside the U.S. Here is a list of insurance companies that we know pay or are rumored to have paid for various medical procedures outside the U.S.

•Blue Cross Blue Shield
•Aetna
•CIGNA
•Delta Dental
•United Health

Moreover, as it is the case with Blue Cross Blue Shield, you will have to call your insurance company to find out whether it will reimburse your treatments. We were told that the company has around 50 independent “mini” companies so to speak with their own rules and regulations. For instance, depending on the state you are from, the insurance company may reimburse you for IVF treatments, but not for dental work.

As a rule, you must have PPO coverage to qualify and will also be responsible for a co-pay. Co-pay may range between twenty and forty percent. Furthermore, you may have to pay for your treatments yourself and file for reimbursement once the procedures are done. Those insurance companies that do pay for medical procedures overseas typically pay only for the surgery or the medical procedure and do not reimburse the travel and lodging expenses.

As we mentioned earlier, there are several tax-advantaged medical savings accounts available to taxpayers in the United States for medical reimbursement. The most common among them is Flexible Spending Account (FSA). Health Savings Accounts (HAS) are less common. We will not go into the differences between these medical savings accounts. You may, however, be able to pay for your overseas medical treatments with money from one of these accounts.

If you think your insurance company may pay for your overseas medical treatments, let us know and we will be delighted to talk to your insurance provider on your behalf.

U.S. Health Care System Does Not Fair Well When Compared to Health Care Systems in Other Countries

Here is an interesting article about the quality of our health care in comparison to systems in six other countries.  In this article, the author uses six developed nations.  Nevertheless, based on the report produced by the UN, the health care system in the US is ranked lower than those of Costa Rica and Colombia.

Reuters

U.S. Scores Dead Last Again in Healthcare Study

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries — Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

“As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it,” Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Previous reports by the nonprofit fund, which conducts research into healthcare performance and promotes changes in the U.S. system, have been heavily used by policymakers and politicians pressing for healthcare reform.

Davis said she hoped health reform legislation passed in March would lead to improvements.

The current report uses data from nationally representative patient and physician surveys in seven countries in 2007, 2008, and 2009. It is available at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2010/J….

In 2007, health spending was $7,290 per person in the United States, more than double that of any other country in the survey.

Australians spent $3,357, Canadians $3,895, Germans $3,588, the Netherlands $3,837 and Britons spent $2,992 per capita on health in 2007. New Zealand spent the least at $2,454.

This is a big rise from the Fund’s last similar survey, in 2007, which found Americans spent $6,697 per capita on healthcare in 2005, or 16 percent of gross domestic product.

“We rank last on safety and do poorly on several dimensions of quality,” Schoen told reporters. “We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost. And we also do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care.”

NETHERLANDS RANKED FIRST OVERALL

The report looks at five measures of healthcare — quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and the ability to lead long, healthy, productive lives.

Britain, whose nationalized healthcare system was widely derided by opponents of U.S. healthcare reform, ranks first in quality while the Netherlands ranked first overall on all scores, the Commonwealth team found.

U.S. patients with chronic conditions were the most likely to say they gotten the wrong drug or had to wait to learn of abnormal test results.

“The findings demonstrate the need to quickly implement provisions in the new health reform law,” the report reads.

Critics of reports that show Europeans or Australians are healthier than Americans point to the U.S. lifestyle as a bigger factor than healthcare. Americans have higher rates of obesity than other developed countries, for instance.

“On the other hand, the other countries have higher rates of smoking,” Davis countered. And Germany, for instance, has a much older population more prone to chronic disease.

Every other system covers all its citizens, the report noted and said the U.S. system, which leaves 46 million Americans or 15 percent of the population without health insurance, is the most unfair.

“The lower the performance score for equity, the lower the performance on other measures. This suggests that, when a country fails to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, it also fails to meet the needs of the average citizen,” the report reads.

(Editing by Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)

Surrogacy in India

One more reason to work with medical tourism agencies which have partnership with IVF clinics in countries with favorable laws.

India’s Rent-a-Womb Industry Faces New Restrictions

By HILLARY BRENHOUSE Hillary Brenhouse – Sat Jun 5, 6:50 pm ET

Since the day they were delivered more than two years ago, twin toddlers Nikolas and Leonard Balaz have been stateless and stranded in India. Their parents are German nationals, but the woman to whom the babies were born is a twentysomething Indian surrogate from Gujarat. The boys were refused German passports because the country does not recognize surrogacy as a legitimate means of parenthood. And India doesn’t typically confer citizenship on surrogate-born children conceived by foreigners. Last week Germany relented, turning over travel visas, and the entire Balaz family is finally going home – though only after a long legal battle that took them deep into the convoluted world of inter-country adoption.

“We can only wish them good luck,” India’s Supreme Court told local media. But it also reiterated the urgent need for legislation to regulate one of India’s fastest-growing industries. Hundreds of foreign tourists spill into the country every year to hire women to incubate their children. India has become the world capital of outsourced pregnancies, whereby surrogates are implanted with foreign embryos and paid to carry the resultant babies to term. In 2002 the country legalized commercial surrogacy in an effort to promote medical tourism, a sector the Confederation of Indian Industry predicts will generate $2.3 billion annually by 2012. Indian surrogate mothers are readily available and cheap. Unlike most countries in which surrogacy is lawful – and bucking the norm in heavily bureaucratic India – the procedure can take place without reams of government red tape. (Read ‘India’s Medical Emergency.’)

That may soon change. A draft bill to direct assisted reproductive technology (ART) is likely to be introduced this year in Parliament. The new legislation will beef up surrogacy guidelines authored by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) that have often gone unheeded by the few hundred Indian fertility clinics accustomed to writing their own rules. Among them is the Akanksha Infertility Clinic in the town of Anand, in the western state of Gujarat, where the Balazs found themselves. “We are lost when there are no laws,” says Akanksha medical director Dr. Nayna Patel, who has become the face of the industry abroad since being spotlighted on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007. “But the people drafting the bill have to remember to take care of the clinics, too.”

Patel chooses among the women who appear at the clinic, at least three a day, hoping to hire out their wombs. She pairs the surrogates with infertile couples, catering to an increasingly international clientele base – from 13 foreign couples in 2006 to 85 in 2009. And she oversees the negotiations between them. The entire process costs customers around $23,000 – less than one-fifth of the going rate in the U.S. – of which the surrogate mother usually receives about $7,500 in installments. Patel implants the women with embryos, using specimens from sperm or egg donors if necessary. Once pregnant, the surrogates are housed onsite until delivery, in a dormitory that was once a local tax office, so that they can be supervised. But under the new legislation, Patel will be permitted to supervise nothing but surgery. (Read ‘Can One Pill Tame the Illness No One Wants to Talk About?.’)

The new proposed government bill bans in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics from brokering surrogacy transactions. It also calls for the establishment of an “ART bank” that will be responsible for locating surrogate mothers, as well as reproductive donors. Fertility clinics will only come into contact with surrogates on the operating table. “We need to create a safe distance between the clinic and the surrogate to avoid unethical practices,” says Dr. R.S. Sharma, deputy director general of the ICMR and member-secretary of the bill’s drafting committee. “IVF clinics should only be concerning themselves with science.”

It’s a suggestion that has caused a stir in the medical community. Dr. Patel insists that she will not accept a surrogate sent to Akanksha unless she herself is permitted to perform medical and background checks. She maintains that ART banks will not have enough experience to determine whether a woman is fit for surrogacy, let alone to replicate the personal bonds she cultivates with her surrogates. “The trust they have with me is what makes the whole thing secure and safe,” she says. “And at the end, when they want to buy a house or a piece of land for farming, we get them the best deal. With this bill, we will not know what they are going to do with such a big amount of money.”

Indeed, surrogate mothers are likely to enjoy an unprecedented autonomy. They’ll have more freedom in negotiating their fee and receive mandatory health insurance from the couple or single employing them. Firm legal standards will ensure that medical professionals only be permitted to implant three embryos in a woman’s uterus per attempt. (The American Society for Reproductive Medicine advises doctors to implant just one; until recently, Dr. Patel routinely used five at a time, aborting anything more than two fetuses.) The legislation will only allow a woman to act as a surrogate up to five times, less if she has her own children, and will impose a 35-year age limit. That way, ladies motivated by desperation won’t be able to put themselves at risk.

In a push to avoid cases similar to the Balaz family debacle, the bill will also make things more challenging for foreign customers. The new legislation will require that the international couple’s home country guarantee the unborn infant citizenship before a surrogacy can even get off the ground. Such a stipulation will certainly not go over with Germany. “In fact, I’m not sure if any country will be ready to pledge citizenship before birth,” says Amit Karkhanis, a prominent Mumbai surrogacy lawyer. Countries accepting of surrogate-born children typically rely on DNA tests done post-delivery to determine the parentage of the baby.

Same-sex couples – a growing number of whom are relying on Indian surrogates – may not even make it as far as a plea for a government pledge. Just last year, Delhi’s High Court overturned a section of the penal code outlawing “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” and the status of gays and lesbians in the country remains unclear. “Tomorrow, if the government outlaws gay relations,” says Sharma of the bill’s drafting committee, “then we will not allow gay couples to hire surrogates. The law of the land will be followed so far as this issue is concerned.”

When Australian partners Trevor Elwell and Peter West visited the country nearly two years ago, only one clinic was open to providing them surrogacy services. Now, with their surrogate-born twin girls a year old and their third baby incubating in Mumbai, Elwell estimates that a half-dozen Indian IVF clinics cater to homosexual couples. The men have found it uncomplicated to use Indian egg donors. They’ve made the switch to a facility where their new surrogate knows they are gay, and is comfortable with it. And they attained Australian citizenship for their children in a process that took no more than a few weeks. For them, as for most who flock to India hoping for a baby, informal surrogacy guidelines have been a blessing. “If the bill does complicate things, people will go to another country,” Elwell says. “There will always be somewhere this can be done. This is just the beginning.”

Embryo Adoption Program

“Do you offer embryo adoption?”

Yes, we do offer such services.  We do have frozen embryos left for embryo adoption purposes that we can offer individuals who are interested in such services.  Information on embryo donors can be provided upon request.

All inclusive donor embryo program is $10,000.  This price does include flights, visa arrangements, hotel stay, and airport transfers.

Sperm Sorting for Gender Selection

We do not offer sperm sorting, because it is less than ideal approach for gender selection.  Sperm tends not to survive this procedure.  Therefore, for gender selection purposes, we recommend and offer PGD testing.