IVF clinics and success data in Alabama
5 clinics, 1,219 procedures in 2021.

Alabama next to the national picture

Procedures exclude egg or embryo banking cycles. Counted by the patient's state of residence. Source: CDC, State-Specific ART Surveillance, 2021 Data Brief (December 2023).

Two of the rows count babies differently. The 437 infants are the result of procedures performed for Alabama residents in 2021; the 340 are ART babies among all infants born in Alabama during 2021. Both are CDC figures, and neither counts by clinic address: an Alabama woman treated in a neighboring state is still in Alabama's totals.

Five questions for your first appointment

With only a handful of clinics in the state, the first consultation is where you find out whether a doctor is the right fit. Map to the Positive gives a short script for that visit. Five of its questions:

• What's your approach to the type of case I'm bringing you?
• What workup sequence do you suggest?
• Which treatments would you consider for this scenario, in order?
• Do you work with insurance or private pay? What costs should I expect?
• If we get to assisted reproduction, do you refer out or perform it?

The book adds that a second opinion is good medical practice, not distrust, especially when the proposed treatment is expensive or complex.

This is one chapter. The map has 42.

This script comes from Chapter 31 of Map to the Positive, in Station IV, on choosing the right doctor. The same station gives the age cutoffs for when to see a specialist, the treatment ladder from the simplest option to IVF, and a phase-by-phase walk through an IVF cycle.