Fertility practice advertising -assessment of fertility practice websites' adherence to society for reproductive technology advertising guidelines

Abstract

ART center operation including: patient check-in, medication-related billing, patient education, communication channels between the clinic and embryology/andrology laboratories, STD screening of commercial egg/sperm banks, and consent form standardization. When combined with stakeholder analysis, the findings identified areas for improvement in efficiency.CONCLUSIONS: This data-driven, evidence-based model can help re-engineer the manner in which an ART clinic operates and has the capability to develop standardized models to improve the efficiency of operations for ART clinics. In the future, established standardized models could be utilized by regulatory bodies to evaluate efficiency and patient safety protocols on national and international levels.

Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology advertising guidelines: How likely are member clinics to maintain compliance after resolving their violations?

“…This finding was consistent with the results of our previous study in which we assessed the compliance with the SART advertising guidelines of 361 member clinics and similarly found supplementary data claims was the leading cause of violations (4). Other studies have cited similar rates of noncompliance in the reporting of success rates (5,6). Fortunately, only 7 (16.3%) of the 43 clinics had subsequent supplemental data violations after they were addressed by the SART AC.…”

Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology advertising guidelines: How are member clinics doing?

“…The websites also showed that financial incentives were present more frequently on private clinic websites than academic clinic websites. More recently, just before the 2018 guideline revisions, Zore et al (7) examined SART fertility practice websites in 2017. They reported that compliance varied in different aspects with 80% of clinics having the required SART link and 49% including a disclaimer statement.…”

“…They reported that compliance varied in different aspects with 80% of clinics having the required SART link and 49% including a disclaimer statement. Zore et al (7) concluded that there was ''significant heterogeneity'' between sites with ''significant work to be done on how practices are reporting success.'' However, there have been no recent studies assessing whether member clinics have improved their compliance and none reviewing the newer SART guidelines.…”