Brandon J. Bankowski's Online Review Report Card

We've worked with 3 other fertility clinics and ORM is above and beyond the WORST. They don't answer their phones -- literally ever. You can wait for half an hour and the system just hangs up on you. The schedulers don't call you back, even when you message, leaving you stressed about getting critical appointments done in time. They have an internal messaging system but it routinely takes days to get a response to urgent messages. You have literally no access to "your" doctor, you cannot ask them questions or talk about next steps. They made us miss THREE cycles with their ridiculous bureaucracy. Once they wouldn't let us ship frozen eggs because they were changing records system, the second time we couldn't start a cycle because our doctor was on vacation and no one would serve as a backup in the week he was gone, and now, they couldn't get their sh*t together in time to start suppression meds for an IVF cycle, despite having plenty of time, so we're being pushed to the next cycle.

We've worked with three other fertility clinics (OHSU, OFI, and Shady Grove) and ORM is above and beyond the WORST. They don't answer their phones -- literally ever. You can wait for half an hour and the system just hangs up on you. The schedulers don't call you back, even when you message, leaving you stressed about getting critical appointments done in time. They have an internal messaging system but it routinely takes days to get a response to urgent messages. You have literally no access to "your" doctor, you cannot ask them questions or talk about next steps. They made us miss THREE cycles with their ridiculous bureaucracy. Once they wouldn't let us ship frozen eggs because they were changing records system, the second time we couldn't start a cycle because our doctor was on vacation and no one would serve as a backup in the week he was gone, and now, they couldn't get their act together in time to start suppression meds for an IVF cycle, despite having plenty of time, so we're being pushed to the next cycle. Save your money, these aholes don't care about you or working with you in any reasonable time frame. The individuals might be nice, but their system is an absolute disaster.

Kind, helpful, knowledgeable, available and great treatment!

Poor bedside manner offering little explanation of thought process

I was with a previous endocrinologist prior to Dr. Bankowski who completely missed the root cause of my ivf failure. Dr. Bankowski has successfully helped me conceive twice. It's something that I didn't think was possible for me. I unfortunately lost one of my twins at 5 days old and his office even sent me flowers. I don't live in Portland anymore but if I attempt ivf again, I will absolutely go to Dr. Bankowski.

My husband and I saw Dr Bankowski and ORM for a fertility consult. On first meeting with Dr Bankowski I enjoyed him a lot. However as we were coming on our first IUI it was falling over the holidays so I got shuffled around with other providers and staff who did not impress me. I felt like a dollar sign to that clinic. When dealing with infertility there should a certain level of sincerity and kindness and we got none of that. My husband and I decided to transfer care to Dr Aimee Chang who is in a solo practice by herself. She answered all my questions and I definitely felt like I was her only patient. She listened to my fears and was always there for extra hand holding. I am happy to say that our baby boy will be arriving in four weeks.

From the moment we stepped into his office it felt like a convayor belt of treatement; conversations seemed scripted, little of our treatement had to do with our specific case. The whole thing felt impresonal and odd. I actually rarely even saw Dr. Bankowski. It felt like we were taking the wrong path. We started to look into adoption. We requested to see Dr. Bankowski to see what his future plan for us was and why. When we spoke to him he gave us the canned explaination of the fertility process. I told him we were seriously condinering adoption. Then he totally shocked us. He began in on this adoption fear attack of lies; It takes so long, babies are sick with unknown background etc. I had done a lot of research and knew all of this to be untrue or atleast more complicated then his statements. I immidiately felt like he did not, and had not ever, had my best interests in mind. I left that day and never returned. Now with a healthy and happy adopted 2.5 year old and pregnant!

Dr. Bankowski and his staff are completely wonderful. They truly care about and listen to their patients. They have become sort of an extended family for us. They go above and beyond for their patients. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Regardless of how much one knows if they cannot convince you that they are on YOUR team then it doesn't matter. It felt that information was only given on a need to know basis. A general timeline was never offered to us and yet the office was surprised when we ran against time constraints/conflicts. Most of the 'meetings' were scripted and felt very impersonal. Staff was not particularly good at follow through and our questions were often misinterpreted when relayed to the doctor. Staff also made slanderous/insensitive remarks about other countries and the quality of care there. When our sperm count (from an advanced testicular biopsy) was very low to questionably viable, we were not counseled regarding alternatives rather we were encouraged to pay our fees and start the medications for stimulating egg production. We had to inquire and stress our concern about egg without sperm! In the end we changed offices and found a clinic and physician we felt more comfortable relating to.

If you're over 35 and don't have ideal numbers, don't bother seeing Dr. Bankowski. He spent about 30 seconds reviewing my records and promptly told me my only option was donor egg. He handed us some canned presentations in a notebook and told us how easy it would be to find a "donor who looked like me." Yep, just an assembly line -- pull a parent from a notebook and off we go. Yuck. He proceeded to tell us that he could try a round of IUI, but then looked at my husband and said, verbatim, with a wink, "I'm sure there are other things you could spend that money on though." We were stunned and disgusted. He also discouraged us from considering adoption (we hadn't even brought that up), stressing that "you just don't know what you're going to get these days." Inappropriate, unprofessional and arrogant. That's all I can say about Dr. Bankowski. He didn't discourage us; we have since found a wonderful RE who's cautiously optimistic about our chances and not so focused on stats and dollars.