What Does IVF Cost in Iowa?
The average cost of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Iowa typically ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 per cycle, including medications.
Your final cost may vary based on factors such as the specific clinic, your individualized treatment plan, the medications required, and the use of common additional services like Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT), embryo freezing, or Frozen Embryo Transfers (FET).
This guide will explore the factors contributing to IVF costs in Iowa and offer resources to help make the process more affordable.
What Contributes to the Cost of IVF in Iowa?
A single IVF cycle in Iowa costs a minimum of around $15,000, including medications, and can often exceed $25,000.
This price range varies significantly due to the different fees that clinics charge for similar services. Other factors such as clinic location, reputation, size, and pricing choices all contribute to these cost variations.
For these reasons, it’s essential to compare clinic prices carefully to understand what’s included and ensure you’re comparing equivalent services.
Additionally, the total cost will vary based on your unique needs and treatment plan. The medications required and specific services can differ broadly from one patient to another.
That said, there are core IVF services that all patients will need to complete an IVF cycle. Let’s look at these next.
Essential Services Required for IVF
The essential services that must be included in the base cost of an IVF cycle are:
- Monitoring Appointments: These appointments track egg development and the uterine lining. Your fertility specialists schedule the egg retrieval procedure.
- Egg Retrieval: The process of collecting mature eggs from the ovaries.
- Anesthesia: Used during egg retrieval to ensure comfort.
- Fertilization: Eggs are fertilized in a lab, either via conventional IVF (mixing sperm with eggs in a petri dish) or ICSI (injecting sperm directly into the egg).
- Embryo Culture and Development: Embryos develop in the lab for 3-7 days before transfer.
- Embryo Transfer: While many clinics offer fresh transfers as part of their standard IVF packages, frozen transfers often come with additional costs for freezing, storing, and preparing the embryo for implantation. The choice between fresh and frozen transfers depends on the patient’s health and treatment strategy. Some patients will require a FET even when planning and accounting for a fresh transfer.
Note on medication costs: Nearly all fertility patients will require medications, yet clinics typically don’t advertise the cost of medications. This is because medications are generally billed separately through a pharmacy. Additionally, from a marketing perspective, omitting medication costs allows clinics to present a lower overall price.
Medication expenses will add between $2,000 and $7,000 per cycle to the final cost. We’ll provide more details about these medications in the add-on costs and services section.
Additional Costs Not Included in Base IVF Price
Beyond the standard essential services included above, additional services may be necessary for many patients and can add $5,000 to $15,000 per cycle. These add-on services include:
IVF Medications: Though not strictly required for IVF, medications are used in over 99% of IVF cycles and represent one of the largest expenses associated with IVF treatment. Larger clinics, such as CNY, negotiate special rates with pharmacies and pass these savings on to their patients through bundled IVF packages.
Cryopreservation and storage: Freezing eggs or embryos and the first year of storage usually add around $600, with an annual storage fee after that. This is common for patients who have extra embryos or who need to delay a fresh transfer due to issues like endometriosis or uterine lining that is not ready for a transfer.
Frozen Embryo Transfers (FET): FET is necessary for patients who plan to transfer extra embryos, opt for genetic testing of embryos, or whose uterine lining isn’t ready for a fresh transfer. FET costs range from $995 at CNY to $4,000 at other clinics.
Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT): PGT screens embryos for genetic conditions and chromosomal abnormalities before transfer. At CNY, PGT costs between $2,000-$3,000, while the national average is around $4,500. These costs cover both biopsy and lab testing. PGT often requires embryo freezing, which may lead to additional FET costs. The total cost of IVF with PGT at CNY Fertility is estimated to be around $12,000, which is comparable to the national average of $27,500.
Donor eggs: Using donor eggs can significantly raise the overall cost of IVF treatment, with expenses ranging from $30,000 to $60,000 or more. IVF with donor eggs at CNY can be done for as low as $10,448.
Donor sperm: Whether for reasons of male infertility, single parenthood, or for same-sex couples starting a family, using donor sperm in IVF is a viable path to parenthood. Depending on the sperm bank and vial type, donor sperm generally costs between $400 and $2,000 a vial. [20]
Gestational surrogacy: Surrogacy adds substantial costs to fertility treatments. In Iowa, surrogacy expenses can range from $60,000 to $150,000.
The cost of multiple IVF cycles: Achieving a successful pregnancy through IVF often requires more than one cycle. According to data from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), only about 26% of patients are successful on their first attempt. For most—about 74%—it typically takes two to three cycles to achieve a successful pregnancy and live birth. Age plays a critical role in success rates, with women over 35 experiencing lower success rates during their first cycle. This decline in success is due to reduced egg quality and quantity with age.
These additional costs underscore the importance of thorough planning and careful comparison when selecting fertility services.
More Affordable IVF for Iowa Residents
Traveling out of state to lower-cost clinics, such as CNY Fertility’s nine national locations, is one way to make IVF significantly more affordable.
For example, CNY Fertility’s IVF package, including medications, costs $5,769. This package includes:
- Egg retrieval
- Anesthesia
- intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) fertilization
- Embryo culture and development in a laboratory
- Assisted hatching (AH) to help embryos implant in the uterus.
- Fresh embryo transfer
- Cryopreservation of embryos that have not been transferred.
- Medications (our most common
Patients who travel will need to budget for local monitoring ($800-$1,500) and additional travel expenses, including flights or driving and lodging for 2-7 nights.
You can learn more about traveling to one of our nine national locations here.
As with our IVF packages, common add-on services such as PGT genetic testing, frozen embryo transfers (FET), and medication enhancement protocols at CNY are all remarkably affordable compared to the average at other Iowa clinics and the national average.
Use our cost calculator to get a personalized estimate for your specific needs. Then schedule a consultation to begin your family-building journey.
{{ treatments[treatment_selected]['data']['footnote'] }} The above calculation is for simulation purposes only. It is reflective of self-pay pricing, includes highly variable estimates paid to CNY and third parties, and national averages obtained through internal research, FertilityIQ, ASRM, and Resolve. Billing through insurance will likely result in substantially different fees. CNY Fertility does not warrant or guarantee any price for services conducted or rendered by a third party and recommends everyone obtain written estimates from any medical facility involved in your treatment as well as verification of coverage from your insurance company prior to beginning treatment. There is no state mandate requiring insurance companies to cover in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. However, some plans, whether through employers or purchased individually, may offer part or full coverage for assisted reproduction procedures, including IVF. Be sure to check with your provider about what coverage may be available to you. Many fertility clinics in Iowa provide financing options to help patients manage the expenses of IVF treatments. Additionally, independent lenders focus on fertility treatment loans, and personal loans from credit unions can be another option. IVF grants are also available to help lower costs, with some grants even covering the full expense of a single IVF cycle. Several national grants, such as the CNY IVF Grant, are accessible to applicants across the country and are awarded monthly. In Iowa, the average cost of IVF ranges between $15,000 and $25,000 per cycle, including medications. Since many patients need multiple cycles and/or additional services, the total cost to bring home a baby can increase to anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000. To help reduce treatment costs, Iowa residents can travel to more affordable clinics, like CNY Fertility, which provides high-quality IVF care for approximately $10,000 per cycle, including medication and travel—offering a significant savings compared to typical costs. For IVF Grant Announcements, Fertility News and More!Automatically Included
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Financing and Grants
The Takeaway
