Laurel Fertility - Fresno's Online Review Report Card

Laurel fertility clinic offered and gave us the best experience we can ask for! They helped us achieve the success in having our first baby and would like to recommend them to anyone that is trying to conceive! From the staff to the conversations to communication to advice they go above and beyond people expectations. They are truly helpful, thoughtful, and amazing people that love helping families. I can't thank them enough for the blessing they gave us. I'm beyond excited and thankful for our journey and will do it all over again to expand  the family! If your looking for an amazing fertility clinic Laurel fertility is the place you and your family will want to be! :) Good luck to all!

we Are very satisfied and happy everything went very well I totally recommend Laurel fertility I'm very pleased with all the personal   Every body very kind and professional and thanks to everybody who make my dream come true DR SMIKLE,C good bless

I would strongly recommend Laurel to anyone undergoing fertility treatment.  My husband and I actually started at a different clinic and are SO glad we moved to LFC for our treatments.  I see there are some negative reviews below, but that was not my experience AT all.  - My primary doctor was Dr. Smikle, and he is incredibly knowledgable, professional and compassionate.  He even went out of his way to answer none time-sensitive questions on a Saturday, which we greatly appreciated.  - They do assign you a primarily Patient Care Coordinator who is a registered nurse.  I had Kat, and she was incredible.  She made many difficult moments much more manageable, and was always quick to respond to any of my questions.  One benefit to Laurel is that it's a medium-sized operation, which also means that if Kat was out (everyone deserves a weekend!) another RN was available to answer any questions.  - I never had problems reaching nurses or doctors, and appreciated that their office would proactively reach out to me with any scheduling or follow-ups.  - Appointments were efficient and professional.  After every monitoring appointment, Dr. Smikle would sit down and review any questions I had.  Sometimes they would start 10-15 mins later than scheduled, but honestly what doctor's office doesn't?  I probably had 20+ apts over the course of my treatment and never had an instance of waiting an insane amount of time to be seen.- I see there are some negative reviews related to billing.  We actually used WIN Fertility, which is partnered with LFC as a secondary insurer (our primary didn't cover IVF) and it was one of the simplest/easiest medical billing situations I've ever been in.  Would strong recommend going through WIN if you're going to LFC. Overall, fertility treatment is complicated and emotional.  We had both good cycles and bad cycles in our IVF process, but I appreciated how honest and thorough the entire LFC team was along the way.  We'll be coming back when it's time for kid #2 :)

I just wanted to say thank you so much to Dr. Smikle It is because of him and his dedicated efforts that I was able to carry to term. I am forever in his debt. Because of how great this place is, when fertility issues are brought up, I ALWAYS recommend this clinic! Meet Clover Jade Brasil. She was born 9/2/21 at 7:11pm. She was born via c-section as I was in the hospital for 3 days for induction and I failed to progress (I had gestational diabetes). She is an absolute joy and is loved by so many. Thank you again! 🍀 ☘️ ☘️

Do not go here.Deciding to move forward with fertility treatments is a scary and unknown process. I went into my experience at Laurel feeling very hopeful only to leave so disappointed. Here are some notes from my overall experience:-Every appointment I had scheduled, I ended up waiting in the lobby at least 30 mins before being seen by the nurse-The nurses and Dr. Ekpo are very short in communication. As a patient, I was hoping for more information & education on the process and what to expect. I'd ask questions but got very little in return. I felt very uneducated throughout the entire process which gave me little faith. Whenever I'd ask a question, I was met with a judgy face and made to feel guilty for asking the question. -There was very poor bedside manner. When bad news was delivered, there was no comfort whatsoever. No empathy. No sympathy. No human connection. Nothing.After 2 failed attempts and very little faith in the providers, I left to go to another practice where my patient experience was night and day compared to Laurel. At my new practice (Spring Fertility if anyone is interested), I had a dedicated Patient Care Coordinator who walked me through the entire process step by step. They allowed me to email or call if I ever had any questions and provided so much comfort every step of the way. I never had to wait in the lobby for 30 mins and every member of the staff was incredibly friendly and welcoming.  Why couldn't Laurel provide a fraction of this service and experience?I do not recommend using Laurel Fertility.

We were recommended to try Laurel Fertility Care by my wife’s coworker. My wife and I met with Dr. Ekpo in September of 2020 to start our baby journey. We decided to go with a natural cycle IUI and were successful in getting pregnant in November of 2020. We welcomed our son in July of 2021. They really know their stuff and we have recommended them to a few of our friends as well.

After spending upwards of 50k between my insurance and out of pocket expenses even before our first child was born, this place was already shaking us down for $1300 to keep our other/single remaining embryo frozen/viable.  I find it shameless that they wouldn't at least allow us to deal with the avalanche of other medical bills for our first birth before putting us over the barrel.  As if trying to raise a family in the Bay Area wasn't costly enough, this notice of "pay up or lose your future sibling possibility" placed unnecessary strain on a new family barely out of the hospital and struggling to produce enough breast milk for the baby.  Funny how a lack of class can turn a potential 5 star review into a single, but here we are.

Where can I start!!!! I absolutely LOVE LFC! Not only have everyone been family in my perspective because infertility is hard and my team have been in the front lines of it all since day one. Everyday wasn't perfect and when my body wasn't ready, I never pushed or blamed my team because they aren't God and doing as much as they can to help me get pregnant. They where all compassionate and willing to listen if I had a question even if it wasn't one that couldn't be answered right away it was found. LFC has helped me achieve pregnancy twice and I couldn't be more grateful. I can literally go on and on. I'll say this, be compassionate world to whom ever steps in the door of LFC, they are a family and do everything possible to get you pregnant. I know infertility is hard but it's worth it knowing your closer to creating a family.

I do not like to leave negative reviews, but our experience just hits so close to home that I can't help but feel the need to share what my husband and I had experienced as new patients at Laurel Fertility Clinic. I also know that every person's experience is different, it's just that I never imagined or wished that we would be the ones to have been treated the way we had at this particular clinic, so we wanted to do what we could and share in the hopes that this review could help warn and/or save any potential patients and their choices in picking the right care for them.To start, like so many reviewers have mentioned in their posts, this clinic's communication is both unreliable in both their method and transparency -- especially their finance and billing team. They use an outdated and frustrating-to-use patient portal where you do not have access to any direct personnel you are trying to reach, or access to your test results and updates in a timely manner because you have to remind them every time to actually upload the results. Forget about trying to reach them via phone -- they have three offices in three different cities in the Bay Area, and they ALL share ONE phone number with one receptionist who seems to rarely pick up the phone... It is pretty common knowledge that fertility treatments -- especially the IVF process -- is daunting, sensitive, and cost-heavy. We are talking about handling a ton of personal research, invasive tests, sensitive and isolating topics, and thousands of dollars... We were fully aware of this going in as new patients, and I think they knew this too, but in reality, it was as if they could care less about the patients and worry more about their practice as a business - emphasizing on how best to draw people in via social media and marketing to cover their turnover. Dr. Smikle seemed very knowledgeable in the field, just not the most competent or skilled at communicating the data and communicating in general with a patient. He was very abrupt, and kept repeating the same information when more specific questions were asked -- that I have higher chances of success because of my age. The clinic is not research-based from what my husband and I could tell, and definitely not up-to-date (let alone clean..!). I can not speak for Dr. Ekpo -- but I would still like to comment that she was pretty abrupt and cold in the brief interaction that I had with her for one of my monitoring appointments. The clinic relies on older methods and beliefs that uses heavier pain medications and antibiotics (specifically for egg retrievals) that we later found out was an outdated practice. I was uncomfortable with the heavier pain medications but was informed that it is a standard practice to "help women relax".I also wanted to mention that the day of the embryo transfer -- which is a crucial step in the IVF process -- was traumatizing. I was told to take valium, and then I waited for over 40 minutes with a full bladder without anyone checking in on me -- not even once. I was also alone because my husband was not allowed to be in there with me because of COVID restrictions.We had several instances where we were trying to contact specific people for information and we later found out that they were busy making marketing material instead of providing care to their current patients. Their financial practice is also sketchy at best -- my husband and I were overcharged for some simple lab tests and the whole process of trying to clear that up also added so much stress and anxiety to the whole process.The rude receptionists, rushed and disorganized staff, lack of communication, lack of availability for consultation, and overall poor bedside manner made the entire experience more stressful and traumatizing than IVF is already expected to be.I cannot emphasize enough for future patients -- PLEASE choose a different clinic if you can!

We had a really wonderful experience with Laurel Fertility. They were always communicative, office staff was friendly, very short wait times, questions always answered, and I'm lucky enough to say we got pregnant on our first try. We had several complications come up along the way that were specific to me and unavoidable, but the expertise of both Dr. Ekpo and Dr. Smikle helped us get through each one. Dr. Smikle especially is very thorough and cautious, knowing how much is at stake with each transfer. We are really thankful we found them.