CRGH Anmeldelser 15

We felt reassured and in competent hands all along, with the overall treatment resulting in a positive outcome. The staff and the consultants have been helpful and professional throughout. The treatment plans and follow-up actions have always been made clear to us and we felt there's an ongoing network of support we could rely on in the process.

I am writing this review to warn others who may be considering CRGH. Unfortunately, my experience has been deeply disappointing and distressing.

1. Incorrect stimulation protocol (rookie mistake)
My consultant (Jara Ben Nagi) prescribed an inappropriate stimulation dose despite having full access to my previous IVF protocol. In my earlier cycle at another clinic, I was given 375 units, which resulted in 4 blastocysts.
At CRGH, I was initially prescribed 325 units, which was only increased to 375 units after 3 days, when it was already too late. This cycle resulted in just 2 blastocysts.
When I challenged my consultant, she admitted she could have prescribed a higher dose from the start. Correct stimulation dosing is basic IVF care, and this mistake should not have happened.

2. Lack of transparency during egg collection
Egg collection was performed by another consultant (Efsthatios Theodorou) . After the procedure, I was told that 6 mature eggs were collected, which was shocking given that 17 follicles were visible on ultrasound.
When I asked how many eggs were collected in total, both consultants said “all” — yet were unable to provide a number. To this day, I still do not know how many eggs were actually retrieved.
The explanation provided was confusing and inconsistent, and even the embryology team could not confirm the total number. This lack of transparency is extremely concerning, especially as my previous IVF cycle at another clinic resulted in 11 eggs collected, 10 of which were mature.

3. Poor clinical support during the implantation phase
I have an underactive thyroid and take levothyroxine, with regular monitoring through my GP. Before transfer, my TSH was below 2.5. After transfer, it increased to 3.3, which can negatively affect implantation.
I contacted the clinic in a state of genuine panic and shared my blood results via screenshots from my NHS app, explaining that an official GP letter would take time. I urgently asked whether my medication dose needed adjusting.
A nurse called Anna refused to escalate the issue due to the format of the results. Only after I was extremely distressed — shouting and close to tears — did she agree to ask a doctor for advice and promised a same-day call. I am still waiting for that call. Why my concern and extreme worry wasn’t priority but following a procedure to the point of absurdity is?

4. My Consultant left without notification
During this same call, I was told — for the first time — that my consultant had left the clinic. No one informed me of this beforehand, nor was I told who my new consultant is, despite the fact that I am still in the implantation phase. This is completely unacceptable.

5. Extremely expensive and not worth it
CRGH is a very expensive clinic, and based on my experience, it is absolutely not worth the cost. Poor communication, questionable clinical decisions, lack of transparency, and inadequate patient support made an already stressful IVF journey far worse.

Do not use this clinic.
If you are deciding between clinics or just starting your fertility journey, I strongly recommend looking elsewhere.

Nearly every interaction with this firm - for an IVF procedure - was underwhelming and more importantly raised serious concerns about their professionalism and competence. On reflection we decided not to proceed with them.

I have been a patient for a number of years, but over the last year the service has declined massively.

Communication is poor - you often can't get through, messages and email will go unanswered

Punctuality - consultants and nurses late to online consultation, appointments are triple booked so you won't get seen on time

Frustrating- you will have to chase the nurses for answers, the consultants secretaries to contact your consultant yet finance will think it's ok to contact you at midnight to remind you of an unpaid invoice

Closures - over the past few years, 2 CRGH sites have closed and all of those patients have been absorbed by the Portland site...there is not enough space or staff to cope with demand

Seems like many of the good consultants are retiring or leaving...I wonder why

You will be just a number here. Remember that statistics on success rates are easily manipulated.

Did egg freezing cycle here in July 2025. Okay experience during the process itself but pretty terrible afterwards (no one really cares after you finished the cycle). Sometime mid my cycle in July they have changed the IT system of the patient portal and asked to reset the passwords which did not work for me. I raised it multiple times with (i) the email they have on the website which is portalinfo @ crgh (ii) reception at the Great Portland Street Clinic (iii) calling patient liaison team (iv) emailing patient liaison team just now again in September (v) giving the same feedback to a person who called me to inquire about my patient experience. But it has not been solved or even acknowledged. Guess they would only do something in a year's time when the next billing period comes for my egg storage fees and I am unable to pay because I have no access to the portal. In the meantime I keep getting notifications of having "secure messages" on the portal which I can't read and some random documents getting uploaded to EngageMD (separate portal for legal documents) - although I am not doing any procedure at the moment (?!). Raised this as well (just recently) with the team as to what that relates to but haven't heard back - slightly worried about my biomaterial being held at a place that can't fix their IT. After the procedure I was given egg count on the day but then no follow up from the doctor or anyone really - which is a shame as I was thinking of doing another cycle and wanted to see if they would do anything differently this time now that they know how my body responds to the hormones. I did not get as many eggs as I hoped for so was thinking of doing another cycle - but with the aftercare being so poor thinking about doing a different clinic (although it would double my storage fees).

From the first phonecall through to my last appointment, I can't say enough good things about the CRGH team. Fertility can be a lonely journey and the support and care I felt was unmatched.

Piss poor service. Have been paying CRGH since February and have spent close £800 with them and have yet to start our IVF journey. The only thing they do quickly without fail is bombard you with payment reminders even if your appointment is months away. We have booked two online consultations first one the consultant joined late then had head set issues the second appointment which was today the consultant hasn't shown up at all. Today's was 10:30am and it's now 12:00 and no one's appeared online. Have been on hold on the phone since 10:40am with there London office and no one's picking up the phone. What should be a straight forward process has been become a complete stressful nightmare. CF96907
Not only did we wait a month for todays consultation me and my wife also booked time off from work so that's a day of our annual leave wasted !

Money makers!
Make you do unnecessary tests
Not transparent at all
Finance team are very rude

Seems to me, the doctor's approach towards us was wrong, the medication doses did not help in creating good quality egg, whiile most of them destroyed during injection phase, only two got normally fertilized but did not reach blastocyst stage. Seems to me lagging experience of CRGH city though all medication and history were shared. Its like major financial loss by chosing them and not getting any outcome. frustrating experience.

We went to CRGH after looking at their (now old) success statistics. We were offered a generic cycle which did not account for my wife's diminished ovarian reserve which was our main issue. We proceeded with treatment because we had no experience to know better. The cycle was a complete failure. First off, we were not monitored often enough to adjust the medication and so ended up with a few very large follicles and others that did not grow well and in the end only a few eggs, none of which grew to become blastocysts.

For our second cycle, no changes were proposed. The doctor said it was a numbers game so we did the same thing. We ended up with two embryos which we were pushed to do genetic testing on, a very expensive procedure that can harm the embryo and according to the HFEA has no benefit other than to avoid unnecessary transfers and pad the CRGH's success rates - if you don't transfer bad embryos you get to have more live births. If you harm a few on the way, so be it. The patients will come back for more cycles. We refused this test which made our consultant angry. Angry! For making a choice that we felt was best for us.

My wife got the flu so we had to freeze the embryo and come back for a frozen embryo transfer.

For the frozen embryo transfer things went even worse. My wife was prescribed blood thinners without checking that she had an unknown bleeding disorder which apparently could easily be seen with a cheap specific test. She got pregnant and was advised to take the medicine for 6 weeks. Four weeks after the embryo transfer, my wife started having belly pain and feeling weakness and numbness in her legs. We called the CRGH because of the belly pain but never got a call back. She ended up in A&E with internal bleeding and miscarried. The A&E doctor could not believe that the medicine had been prescribed without doing a simple test to see my wife was prone to bleeding. We informed our consultant of this and guess what, he didn't even bother to call and check on her or offer an apology. I have never seen this level of callousness.

A year later we are still traumatized by our experience and regret the day we stepped foot in this clinic.

After the latest comms with this incompetent team - looks like this review needs to go out.

We needed to manage:
• Being send multiple contradicting plans (we were sent 4 different plans, following the initial call with the doctor – each providing a different approach).
• Being sent private medical scans on 2 separate occasions from other patients.
• Dealing with the reception desk onsite, to manage our appointments, because our appointments had been cancelled and rearranged without informing us.
• Oversold drugs
• Missing drugs
• Trying to sell other drugs right before you go into an operation
• They will call to ask what drugs you are on rather than checking records themselves.
• Selling drugs for procedures you have not agreed to, nor procedures that are on the plan they have shared with you.
• Finance and nursing do not communicate, so you need to manage the overlap. Which means you need to check that everything agreed with the doctor is included on the “plan” and that they haven’t included procedures that were not discussed with the doctor.
• Finance are not able to tell you what you have already paid for and what is left to pay because they say they require medical training to inform you of this. Nursing will not be able to tell you what you have paid for and what is left to pay because they say they don’t work in finance. We were only provided Nursing and Finance as options to get details of this.
• There is absolutely no options for financial arrangements or financial support – if you can’t pay the invoice (including unexpected invoices) that arrived the day before an appointment – they will not let that appointment happen and they will not agree to any form of a payment plan. It is payment in full or cancel the treatment and rearrange your schedule irrespective of where you are in the process.
• Missing syringes
• Having to buy drugs earlier than anticipated. The reason we gather from the drugs company was because CRGH were changing suppliers and they needed to complete the contract. If you can’t pay at the date they demand – your treatment plan will need to be reorganised.
• Having invoices sent the day before that treatment is scheduled… then if their system doesn’t pick up the payment, they will make you wait in reception and discuss payment infront of everyone else. If their system hasn’t picked up payment evidence – they will make you wait in reception, while the evidence is either tracked down or you resend it… infront of everyone in reception.
• You have to sit with other patients in their reception area dealing with the last point – who rightly point out how difficult it is to manage to a receptionist who is keen to point out CRGH’s policy.
• They will call you out as a number – this is likely because there is no privacy in reception… but then at other times they will also call you out by name in reception… so who knows why.
• They will not wait for verbal consent before starting intimate examinations (otherwise known as penetration without consent).
• Their technology fails, resulting in confusing text message instructions which results in contradictory and incorrect advice.
• They refuse any wrong doing despite showing evidence otherwise.
• If you claim that some advice is confusing – they will flatly deny that this is the case rather than offering alternative ways to communicate.
• If you provide feedback, they will ask for the specific details of your feedback – but your answer makes no difference to their response – which is to ignore the specifics of your response and then never acknowledge wrong doing.
• You will be chased the day after egg transfer about destroying other eggs – which is not a nice discussion whilst you are trying to not destroy the egg you have.

I completed my treatment journey at CRGH Portland Street, having spent approximately £30,000 on their services. Unfortunately, my experience was far from satisfactory, and I feel compelled to share my honest feedback.

Firstly, the level of service I received was among the worst I’ve encountered in any medical setting. Despite the significant financial investment, the care and attention to detail were severely lacking. The clinic’s protocols feel outdated compared to other leading fertility clinics around the world, which was disappointing given the reputation they seem to uphold.

One particular incident that stood out was when I accidentally forgot to pay a £50 fee for a blood test. To my surprise, the clinic was incredibly quick to escalate this minor oversight to a debt recovery company. This felt unnecessarily aggressive, especially considering the substantial amount of money I had already spent with them. However, when it came to providing timely results or addressing my concerns, the same urgency was nowhere to be found. The delay in receiving test results was frustrating and added unnecessary stress to an already emotionally taxing process.

Overall, my experience at CRGH Portland Street left much to be desired. For a clinic that charges premium prices, I expected a much higher standard of care, efficiency, and compassion. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend them based on my experience, and I would advise others to thoroughly research alternative clinics with better protocols and better costumer service.

A year after completing a treatment with CRGH they are harassing us about an outstanding balance that was unpaid although we have paid the entire amount - they wouldn’t even make an appointment for the treatment unless the invoices were paid in full. Why wait for one year to get in contact? Worst experience I have ever had with a clinic, would not recommend!

I went to CRGH to freeze eggs years ago and recently unfroze them. Only 3 of my two batches of eggs survived. 3 out of 15. I was told about 95% of vitrified eggs survive. My colleague went to a different clinic and almost 90% of her eggs survived.

My wife and I started our torturous experience with CRGH in 2021 and not only did we end up without a baby and with our bank accounts drained but with further medical issues from a botched treatment. We ended up going to Spain and having our son through a clinic there where they really paid attention to us instead of giving us the cookie cutter treatment. In Spain we discovered that our infertility was not "unexplained" but was due to sperm issues on my side and issues with the shape of my wife's womb. My wife had a surgery that helped with implantation.

We chose CRGH because it prides itself on its top statistics on the HFEA website from 2018. However, those statistics are much worse now and have been for the last two years. Last year's were even worse than the current ones listed. But the HFEA is not updating their stats so people mistakenly flock towards CRGH.

Our experience was one full of mistakes - the consultant wrote the wrong prescription twice, one of which resulted in my wife taking three times the dose necessary and ending up in A&E with severe side effects. We weren't even given an apology for this mistake. We were given tests and treatments that were useless but not the tests and treatments we actually needed that would increase our chances. Dr Serhal's understanding of IVF is based in the 1990s with outdated ideas of what works and what doesn't. Unless it makes them money. We got pushed PGT testing when we are very low risk for chromosomal abnormalities at age 30. But that is what makes them a lot of money.

The drugs prescribed are sold by the clinic at a very steep mark-up over the price you can get at ASDA.

We did four cycles and our protocol never changed nor were the relevant investigations undertaken after the first or second or third failure - the consultant just wanted to continue doing the same thing over and over again claiming it's a number's game.

The receptionists and the nurses are very nice though at times the nurses seem quite clueless giving us mistaken instructions about injections. The consultants couldn't care less.

Please stay away from this place if you value your health, sanity, money and if you really want to have a baby.

We can't recommend an alternative clinic in the UK but Fertility Madrid is where we got our son who is 2 weeks now.