Insurance / Fees

Insurance:

Most of the insurance policies at this point have no acupuncture coverage for fertility treatments.  You may find out  your coverage by calling the toll free number on your insurance card.  Should your insurance cover your acupuncture treatment, our office will, as a courtesy, provide you a standard insurance form after every 6 visits or at end of your treatments for you to mail in and get direct reimbursement from your insurance.

New patient appointment Fees policies:
  1. All initial fertility evaluation and assessment appointments (which do not include acupuncture treatment) require a deposit of $250 for female or $95 for male for booking the appointment. Treatment fee of $90 is due after each treatment.
  2. Full deposit of evaluation fee is charged if appointment is changed or cancelled less than 7 days for any reason with no exceptions. A new deposit is required for a new appointment.
  3. No refund for no shows, or late arrivals. We can not use other patient’s time to make up the time you lost due to unforeseen delay on your part such as but not limited to traffic, delay from prior appointments, or delay due to any other reasons.
  4. All cancellation resulting a refund request must be made with email.  We do not accept cancellation calls for initial evaluations.
  5. Full deposit of evaluation fee is charged If appointment is made for less than 7 days, there is no refund of the total deposit for a change or cancellation or no shows. A new deposit is required for a new appointment.
  6. For return patients, change or cancellation made less than 24 hours will result a $25 late notice fee.

Our office requires patients to pay for the treatment at the time of the service. We accept personal checks, Visa, Mastercard.

Acupuncture for infertility is a very specialized field.  It requires a thorough understanding in both Chinese and Western medicine.  Not every acupuncturist has the extensive knowledge and experience (treating over 3000 infertility patients) to achieve the 65+% of success rate. Most of Dr. Lee’s patients who got pregnant spent less than a few thousand dollars–less than the cost of one IVF.

My advice is that when choosing an acupuncturist, the experience (ask how many infertility patients he or she has treated) and success rate (what percentage of the patients got pregnant). These two questions are much more important than the cost per visit.  Making the right choice will save both time and money in the long run.  On the subject of cost, some of my patients report that some acupuncturists who work in IVF clinics charge 2.5 times the fee we charges here for a regular (non-initial) visit.  Again, I direct your attention to the experience.  If the acupuncturist is an expert who has treated over 2000 patients, it is well justified for the high fee part of which will pay for the overhead in IVF clinic.  But, this often is not the case.  Some of my patients reported that these are young, inexperienced acupuncturists who use acupuncture technique that should not have used prior to IVF transfer.  These acupuncturists who blindly do the “Shotgun Therapy” work in an IVF clinic either are not enough to inform you whether or not your condition is ready for another IVF or they simply do not know what to do.  One of my patients used an acupuncturist in an IVF clinic found slower and uneven follicle growth (stim. day 7 all follicles in the left ovary are still under 10 mm and all follicle in right ovary are under 7mm) compared to her previous cycles when she was getting acupuncture here.  She came back to our office, and within 3 treatments, she had 10 follicles, all which were over 18mm (5 in each ovary).  She is very happy again.

Office Policy:  We value your time and our time.  When an appointment is made, Dr. Lee sets aside his time and a treatment room for the patient and we turn away patients who want to come on the same day and time we set aside for you.  We in turn expect our patients to give our office a 24 hour notice in advance to change or cancel an appointment so other has a chance to come in also to avoid the no show or late cancellation fee $25.  Please also note that our 3-visit package discount is non-refundable if a patient decide not to use all three treatments and it expires after 1 year.  Also, all herbs are non-refundable.

A few words on “FREE Evaluation”

Finding out the root cause of infertility is a complex process that requires time, experience and dedication on the part of the acupuncturist.  If you are thinking about seeing an acupuncturist who offers a “free evaluation”, you may ask yourself, am I seeing the most experienced acupuncturist with a long history of successful track record?  If that acupuncturist is, then why does he or she need to offer “free consultations” to get your attention?  He or she would have been well known and would have been too busy to entice new patients with “free consultations”.

In addition, is it really free if you got a diagnosis that does not lead to success?  Some of Dr. Lee’s patients have tried other acupuncturists who offered “free consultations” in the past for months and were not successful.  The reason: the incorrect diagnosis.  Many of the acupuncturists do a good job in putting needles in the body.  There are some who have even written books on the subject.  But, putting needles in and theorizing accounts for only 5% of the success.  40% of the success is decided on the initial diagnosis (putting the theory into practice is what needed for success).  30% of the success is dependent upon the effectiveness of the treatment which entails the continuous monitoring of the patients’ response to the treatments from acupuncture and herbs and the making of adjustments along the way (which requires experience).  The last 25% of the success comes from patient’s willingness and determination to follow the advice and to stay on course for several months.

If your initial diagnosis is wrong from a free consultation, then you won’t be saving money at all. The several months you spend on the wrong course will be much more expensive than the cost of an accurate consultation from an acupuncturist with a proven success record.   If you are under age 33, you may still have time to start a family by switching your care from a free consultation provider to someone with proven record of success.  But, if you are 39 or older, losing months of your time trying various acupuncturists with “free consultations” means an ever more difficult task to achieve success which diminishes drastically after age 42 even if with help from Dr. Lee