So this is news: IVF NJ has merged with RMA NJ effective March 16. We received a single page typed letter in the mail announcing this news with very little fanfare.
My initial thoughts ranged from "huh?" to "wow, good for RMA" to "oh shit."
So maybe this explains the newly exploding marketing campaign as evidenced by the radio commercial I heard the other day or the two page spread in a glossy print magazine that I saw in the nail salon. They've made some mad bank off this merger. It's a little disconcerting to see something that once had word-of-mouth cache now fairly ubiquitous, especially when it is directly correlated to making money and has the potential to affect quality of medical care .
I know we're not in-cycle now, thank goodness, but this is a huge change and having just seen Anne and Dr. Hock, the fact that neither of them mentioned a word struck me as rather odd. I was there on February 5. They definitely knew this was happening. Perhaps they were legally bound by silence until it was official? But I do find it strange that the letter we received is nowhere to be found on the RMA patient portal. There is a press release that was posted on March 18 but that's not what we got in the mail. Something about the way this was announced to past/current patients rubs me the wrong way. Am I losing sleep over it? No, but the reality is, this will affect us, should we move forward with another FET in the future.
When I stop to think about logistics, it is perplexing as to how this is going to work. Supposedly, IVF NJ patients have been absorbed into the offices of RMA, thus potentialy increasing the volume and the wait time in each RMA clinic. If you read these FAQs from the website, you'll learn that while all doctors are remaining with their current patients, it's vague about the nurses. If I were an IVF NJ-er, I'd have so many questions right now. Heck, as an RMA alum, I have many questions. I don't envy those women mid-cycle who must feel completely blindsided by this announcement, on top of all the other stresses they are dealing with along their journeys. In fact, on my infertility support community, this is a very hot topic on the local boards. IVF NJ folks have been told they have to wait up to 60 days for insurance to cover their upcoming cycles with the new RMA branding. I'd be furious! Some of these women don't have two months to spend waiting around. Granted, there's not much you can do to battle arbitrary insurance policies if that's what they're telling the new Franken-clinic.
So where does this leave us? Future uncertain. Some visceral reaction is repelling me from accepting this merger. I don't know if it's irrational because I feel some weird possessiveness of the old RMA, or what. Perhaps I associate our success with pre-merger RMA and my brain can't compute that it no longer exists as we knew it. Then again, it's not like RMA was ever intimate. You already feel like cattle at Basking Ridge and now that's simply going to be exacerbated. Hard to tell what, exactly, I'm feeling. Maybe it's more to do with taking something that is already impersonal (you know, ART in general), as biologically exacting and individualized as the protocols are, and amplifying the sense of insignificance? That seems like over-analysis.
Whatever the real reasons for my hesitation are, I'll give myself some time to absorb and to mull but I won't ignore them if they're still around in September.
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