Virginia Fertility & IVF

About Virginia Fertility & IVF

Virginia Fertility & IVF is a private reproductive endocrinology practice at 4100 Olympia Circle in Charlottesville: one address, one embryology laboratory, and 1,114 ART cycles reported to SART for 2024. It joined Ivy Fertility in 2023, a US management network of 13 clinics, but the cycle count above is this Charlottesville registration’s own filing (SART clinic ID 2359), not a network roll-up. Unusually for a fertility practice, it publishes its self-pay prices; the full list is reprinted below.

Where the University of Virginia fits, and where it does not. Dr. Bruce Bateman started the IVF program inside the UVA Health System in 1986, and this clinic descends from that program. In October 2005 the physicians, manager, nurses and lab staff moved out into a newly built laboratory at Martha Jefferson Hospital, and in October 2006 Dr. Christopher D. Williams opened the present practice as a physician-owned private clinic. The institutional tie ends there: Virginia Fertility & IVF is not a UVA Health clinic today, and its Charlottesville address plus telemedicine visits are where care happens. UVA reappears only as biography. Williams sat on its faculty from 2001 to 2005 and co-directed its IVF program; Dr. Laura P. Smith did college, medical school and residency there. In a university town where patients often assume an academic appointment, read this as a private practice staffed by academically trained physicians.

The outcomes, and what they can honestly be compared with. Our data record carries live births per intended retrieval, two rows from two different years. The clinic row is SART’s 2024 preliminary snapshot: 59.3% under 35, 37.0% at 35-37, 19.7% at 38-40 and 12.5% in the oldest band. The national row is SART’s 2023 national summary: 53.2 / 39.9 / 26.2 / 9.4. Because the reporting years differ, neither “above the national average” nor “below it” is a fair verdict here, and the direction changes by band: the clinic row is higher under 35 and in the oldest band, lower at 35-37 and 38-40. Some of that gap is the year, and some is case mix.

Both rows are also missing something: a fresh-versus-frozen split. Those sub-rows are empty in our data for this clinic and for the national figures, so we have no fresh-embryo or frozen-embryo success rate for Virginia Fertility & IVF, and you should not infer one from the single set of numbers above. What the 2024 report does make visible is how solid each band is: 212 intended retrievals under 35, 115 at 35-37, 106 at 38-40, 35 at 41-42 and 15 over 42, with 1.4% to 5.7% of cycles cancelled before retrieval. The caution SART prints on these comparisons, and which this clinic reproduces under its own success-rate block, applies doubly across years: clinic rates may not be comparable because patient characteristics, treatment approaches and entry criteria for ART differ from place to place.

Two figures to handle carefully. The clinic’s homepage shows its own table: 62.1, 66.7, 65.4, 55 and 50 across five age bands against a column it labels national average at 52.8, 51.9, 50.8, 48.6 and 45.8. Live-birth rates that climb from the under-35 band into the mid-30s and stay near 50% past age 42 do not behave like any per-retrieval measure we know of, and the page does not name its metric. This page uses the SART report and leaves that table out. Separately, our record’s national per-clinic reference of 932 cycles is mixed-denominator arithmetic (SART cycle counts over a CDC clinic count), so it is context for the 1,114 figure, not something we multiply or divide.

What the clinic says about itself, kept apart from what is independently checkable: more than 5,000 babies born since founding, “9 out of 10 patients would recommend” the practice, and a badge reading “ranked fertility clinic in Central Virginia by Newsweek.” The only Newsweek list our research verified is the national one, America’s Best Fertility Clinics 2025, where this practice appears at No. 89. Not published in our sources for this clinic: wait time from first call to cycle start, monitoring start times or evening and Saturday monitoring, medication prices, and embryo or egg storage fees after the first year bundled into the egg-banking package.

Accreditations & Awards

SART member clinic filing under clinic ID 2359, with a public 2024 summary snapshot report. That report is the only independent outcome check available for this practice, and our source record lists medical director Christopher D. Williams as the physician verifying the filing
College of American Pathologists accreditation of the embryology lab, stated on the clinic’s About page. Our research could not pull a certificate number from the CAP directory, so ask to see it; the REI Protect requirements below make a lab accreditation a condition, which is indirect corroboration
REI Protect Seal of Approval, announced 21 March 2025, re-reviewed annually. The criteria are named and testable: REI-certified physicians, CAP or TJC lab accreditation plus CLIA certification, an IVF-specific electronic medical record, electronic witnessing of lab handling steps, and sensor monitoring of lab storage. Of this clinic’s credentials, this is the one most directly about whether your embryos are handled safely
Newsweek/Statista “America’s Best Fertility Clinics” 2025, No. 89 nationally — verified on the published list. The site’s “#1 in Central Virginia” framing is the clinic’s own ordering; our research did not locate a separate Newsweek regional list behind it
Ivy Fertility member since 2023 — a management and laboratory-resources network, useful for staffing and shared protocols, but not a clinical accreditation of this site
Patient rating on record here: 4.5 across 208 reviews. That is a large enough base to say something about scheduling, nursing and front-desk experience; it says nothing measurable about laboratory performance
State licensure is not documented in our record — the clinic license number field is blank, and no Virginia clinic permit number appears in our sources. Ask the practice for its CLIA number and state registration before you sign a financial agreement
Clinic-reported figures we did not verify: 5,000-plus babies born, nine in ten patients recommending the practice, and PGT described as “over 98% accurate in diagnosing chromosomal abnormalities”

Why Choose Virginia Fertility & IVF

Freeze-all is the actual practice here, and the 2024 counts prove it. Among patients under 35, SART’s report for this clinic shows 173 thawed-embryo transfers against 6 fresh transfers, 96.5% of them with a single embryo. At 35-37 there were 100 thawed transfers, 97.0% single embryo; at 38-40, 60 transfers, 98.3% single embryo. Same-cycle banked embryo transfers under 35 were 100% single embryo. If your priority is avoiding twins, the published behavior of this lab is more informative than a slogan
A named low-injection protocol: Gentle IVF replaces injectable ovulation suppression with an oral medication while keeping stimulatory hormone injections, monitoring visits and drug cost lower. The clinic states comparable pregnancy and live-birth outcomes and lists diminished ovarian reserve as a typical fit; its page cites clinical studies generally rather than a specific trial, so ask your physician whether your case is the population those studies cover
Embryo biopsy on site, sequencing sent out, both prices printed. PGT-A, PGT-M and PGT-SR are offered after 5-7 days of embryo culture. The clinic charges $2,750 for the biopsy and passes through the outside laboratory’s $195 per embryo plus shipping. There is no in-house genetics lab, and the pricing page does not pretend otherwise
Third-party reproduction is long-standing and priced: gestational carrier work for more than 20 years, with both agency and known or compassionate carriers; donor eggs from a cryobank, fresh, or directed from someone you know. 2024 volumes were modest and are published: 12 frozen donor-egg cycle starts, 22 thawed donor embryo transfers, 18 donated-embryo transfers
Preservation on an oncology clock: appointments for patients facing cancer are booked within a 72-hour window, and the EggSafe packages put refund conditions in writing (20 or 30 eggs from one cycle, age under 40, BMI under 40, non-smoker for the 30-egg tier, favorable ovarian reserve, cycles chosen and paid up front)
Money conversations are built in, not left to the collection letter. The billing department calls before your first visit about deductibles and coverage, a financial coordinator calls after the diagnosis visit if you choose IVF, and the practice lists twelve payers it works with plus four named financing partners with published loan ranges
One room, one record: your physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers and embryologists work from a single 10,000-square-foot building, and the practice says new patients commonly begin with a nurse practitioner before cycling into physician care
What you will have to ask about: cycle-start wait time, monitoring hours (no evening or Saturday monitoring is documented and Saturday is closed), fertilization and blastocyst-formation rates, whether time-lapse culture is used, donor-screening standards of the specific egg bank, and any Virginia-specific legal analysis

IVF & Fertility Services

IVF (In Vitro Fertilization): 10-14 days of injectable stimulation with ultrasound and blood monitoring, transvaginal egg retrieval under conscious sedation taking roughly 20-30 minutes, embryo culture observed for 5-7 days, and transfer guided by abdominal ultrasound without anesthesia. Physicians here routinely recommend freezing all viable embryos and transferring later
ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection): single-sperm injection for male factor or prior fertilization problems, priced separately from a cycle
Gentle IVF: the oral-suppression variant described above, with fewer injections, fewer monitoring visits and lower medication cost
IUI (Intrauterine Insemination): washed partner or donor sperm placed through the cervix, about twenty minutes, no sedation. The clinic says its providers perform more than 800 IUIs a year; three or four cycles is the usual point at which a change of plan gets discussed
PGT-A, PGT-M and PGT-SR: chromosome-number screening, single-gene disease testing with referral to a genetic counselor when carrier screening suggests risk, and structural-rearrangement screening. Biopsy in this lab, analysis at an outside genetics laboratory
Egg freezing and fertility preservation: vitrification of mature eggs, with the practice recommending freezing before 40 and citing its own figure of success rates above 70% for patients who bank 20 or more eggs before 35
Donor eggs: cryobank frozen eggs, fresh donor cycles, and directed donors such as a friend or relative; the gestating partner’s uterine preparation and hormonal support are managed by the practice
Gestational carrier (surrogacy) programs: carrier screening, legal contracts before scheduling, embryo transfer into the carrier, and pregnancy monitoring by this clinic for about nine weeks before care transfers to the carrier’s chosen obstetrician
LGBTQ+ family building: diagnostic workup for both partners in a same-sex female couple, natural-cycle or hormonally supported IUI, IVF, reciprocal IVF where one partner provides eggs and the other gestates, quarantined and tested sperm from a known donor or a named sperm bank, and egg, sperm or embryo freezing for transgender and non-binary patients, ideally before gender-affirming treatment
Male infertility: semen analysis at the clinic or a partner lab, lifestyle and medication review, hormonal treatment, surgical causes such as varicocele, sperm retrieval with ICSI for severe oligospermia, and referral to a reproductive urologist
Recurrent pregnancy loss: evaluation after two or more losses, looking at karyotype and genetic causes, uterine structure (fibroids, polyps, scar tissue, septum), progesterone support, thyroid and diabetes control, and clotting disorders such as antiphospholipid antibody syndrome; treatment may be hormone supplementation, hysteroscopic surgery, or IVF with PGT
Fertility evaluation: ovarian reserve by FSH and AMH plus antral follicle count, thyroid and progesterone testing, genetic carrier screening, transvaginal ultrasound read with you during the visit, saline infusion sonography, hysterosalpingogram, and semen analysis
Telemedicine: virtual visits alongside in-person care, with testing done at the Charlottesville clinic

Fees & Packages

The clinic publishes self-pay prices and states plainly that they are subject to change. Medications, anesthesia and outside laboratory fees are excluded unless noted, and ICSI and PGT are always add-ons to a cycle.

New patient visit: $432-$750. Internal labs: $60-$400. External labs priced by the performing laboratory
Semen analysis: $210. Hysterosalpingogram (HSG): $895. IUI: $650 (the IUI page elsewhere quotes “from $600 and up”)
Single fresh IVF cycle with embryo transfer: $10,500 — ultrasounds, bloodwork, retrieval and transfer included
Egg retrieval cycles: $7,900 for the first, $6,900 for the second, $5,900 for the third and after, each including cryopreservation
Frozen embryo transfer: $4,500 programmed (medications roughly $700-$1,000 extra) or $5,000 natural cycle (medications roughly $500 extra)
IVF Success or Refund Program: $21,500 under 35, $23,000 under 35 with ICSI, $23,500 at 35 and over, $25,000 at 35 and over with ICSI. Up to six cycles, full refund if unsuccessful, eligibility criteria apply, and medications, anesthesia and PGT are extra
Reciprocal IVF with fresh transfer: $13,000, ICSI included, PGT extra
Egg banking: $6,195 including one year of storage
PGT: $2,750 biopsy fee to the clinic, plus $195 per embryo to the outside lab and shipping
Cryobank egg donor cycle: $8,500, excluding medications and the bank’s own fees. Gestational carrier transfer cycle: $8,500, excluding medications, psychological evaluation and legal fees
EggSafe multi-cycle freezing: $11,300 for two cycles, $16,200 for three, $20,600 for four, or the flat EggSafe 20 at $12,500 and EggSafe 30 at $16,500 with the refund terms noted above

Insurance: the practice says it works with most major carriers and names Aetna, Anthem, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Cigna, First Health, KindBody, Maven, Meritain, Progyny, UnitedHealthcare, Tricare and VHN. Which of your benefits actually apply to your diagnosis and protocol is determined in the pre-visit call with the billing department — get it in writing, and note that our sources document no Virginia insurance mandate to point at.

Financing partners on the clinic’s own page: CapexMD (loans from $3,000 to $50,000, terms 6-60 months, can include medications and genetic testing), Future Family, PatientFi (up to $60,000, no down payment), and LendingClub Patient Solutions ($500-$65,000, 6-84 months, advertised APRs from 3.99%). Ask for an itemized estimate after the diagnosis visit, and ask separately about storage fees, which keep running whether or not you transfer.

Patient Journey

Consultation — in person at Charlottesville or by video. History, family-building goals and the testing you need are set here, and if you come in, part of the workup is done at that appointment. Partners are strongly encouraged to attend. The practice notes that new patients often start with one of its nurse practitioners
Testing — bloodwork, ultrasound, uterine imaging such as HSG or saline sonography, and semen analysis, all done at the clinic; some results come back the same day, and the transvaginal ultrasound is reviewed with you while you are still in the room
Diagnosis and plan — a follow-up visit to read the results, name the obstacle and choose between IUI, IVF, Gentle IVF, a donor or carrier path, surgery or expectant management. The clinic’s stated threshold for starting a workup is twelve months of trying, or six months if you are over 35
Financial clearance — the billing department calls before your first visit about deductibles and coverage, and a financial coordinator calls after the decision to pursue IVF. This step is scheduled, not left to chance
Stimulation and monitoring — 10-14 days of hormones with ultrasounds and bloodwork; the clinic says egg-freezing patients are typically seen four to eight times across a two-week stretch. Gentle IVF requires fewer visits
Retrieval, then either transfer or freeze — the retrieval takes 20-30 minutes under conscious sedation with a day or two of recovery; embryos are cultured 5-7 days, biopsied if you chose PGT, and in this practice most are frozen rather than transferred fresh
Transfer and confirmation — uterine preparation with medication and monitoring, then transfer through the cervix without anesthesia. A blood test 10-12 days later decides the next conversation: follow-up obstetric scheduling if positive, a results consultation if not

Local Legal Framework

Our sources for this clinic name no Virginia statute number, no section of the Code of Virginia and no Virginia insurance mandate, so this section does not supply any. The two law references carried in this page’s data record are labels only — “Virginia Surrogacy Act” and “Virginia Code - Assisted Reproductive Technology” — and our research located no statutory text, section number or decision behind either name. What follows is what the research actually contains, plus the limits of it.

Egg and sperm donation happen openly here — cryobank eggs, fresh donors, directed donors, and sperm from named banks or a quarantined known donor. The clinic’s own donor FAQ states that anonymity can no longer be guaranteed because of the spread of consumer DNA testing, and speaks of “directed” and “non-directed” donors rather than anonymous ones. Its observation that some states let donor-conceived adults learn a donor’s identity at eighteen is a general statement about “some states,” not a claim about Virginia law, and our sources do not say which rule applies in this one
Gestational carrier work is routine: the practice describes more than 20 years of it, carrier screening and written legal contracts before a cycle is scheduled, and cooperation with surrogacy agencies as well as known or compassionate carriers. Psychological evaluation and legal fees are excluded from the $8,500 transfer cycle, which is the clearest signal in the pricing that the legal work belongs to separate attorneys for intended parents and carrier
Parentage is the part nobody’s brochure covers. Where a child will be genetically unrelated to one or both intended parents, or gestated by a carrier, the legal route to parenthood is settled by state law and court process, not by the birth record or the clinic’s consent forms. Our sources name nothing for Virginia. Retain Virginia reproductive-law counsel before embryos are created, and ask your own questions rather than relying on the agency’s form
Stored eggs and embryos are governed by the consent you sign. The clinic’s disposition form lets you choose, for unused material, donation to the lab, donation to another patient, or discard. Storage terms, use after separation or divorce, and what happens if you stop paying are contract questions, and the contract — not the marketing page — will control
PGT is available here for aneuploidy, monogenic disease and structural rearrangement, with genetic counselor referral for PGT-M. Nothing in our sources documents a Virginia restriction beyond informed consent, and nothing documents a requirement either; the clinic’s own “>98% accurate” figure is its marketing claim about chromosome screening, not a guarantee about a specific embryo
Insurance is a contract question, not a statutory one in our record. Twelve payers are named above; Virginia’s treatment of infertility mandates appears nowhere in our sources