IVF in Hawaii with Kaiser Insurance

 When I first started my fertility journey I had Kaiser, which is very popular here in Hawaii. The downside to my Kaiser coverage is I had to go to my primary care physician (PCP) and get a referral. I hadn’t ever been to my PCP since moving back to Hawaii so they had some things they wanted to try before they referred me to the fertility specialist. I had been tracking my cycle with my body temperature and mucus. Nowadays, there are a lot of other fancy gadgets that can be used to track ovulation rather than making a graph using daily basal body temperatures, here is a quick list of fertility monitors. My PCP referred me to another Kaiser doctor on the island that started me on a drug called Clomid to try to stimulate ovulation, in case that was the issue. I think they wanted me to try this for 5 or so months. Each cycle we also had other ‘extracurricular’ homework assignments, that I won’t share just yet, to try to improve our chances of conceiving each month. Once that trial and error portion of that experiment came and went I was able to book an appointment with Dr. Hou of the Honolulu Kaiser Clinic. She was amazing! Once I was under the care of Dr. Hou, all of my appointments were off island. I would call the Kaiser travel line and they would book my flights (paid for my insurance) and I would get a voucher for a taxi to take me back and forth from the airport to the clinic. 

I went through one egg retrieval surgery and thankfully we got 6 healthy embryos to reach day 5. That is a whole process in itself, more to come later. With our insurance through Kaiser, we had one transfer to be successful. We did end up getting pregnant but since this story doesn’t end there you can imagine it did not go as hoped. Once I accepted what happened, I picked myself up and called Dr. Hou at Kaiser to see what our next step was. This is where I had to grieve a second time. In my ignorance, I believed that even though insurance wouldn’t pay for another transfer, that we could pay out of pocket and try again through Kaiser. Unfortunately that is not the case. Once you go through your one ‘chance’ with them then you are done, there is no paying out of pocket for a second try. I was referred to The Fertility Institute of Hawaii. I was devastated that after 2+ years I would have to start a new relationship with a new doctor but such was life. As it so happens, I was no longer going to have insurance through Kaiser and would be on HMAA.  So not only did I have to trust a new doctor but I had to figure out what the process was for the fertility treatments with a new insurance provider, more specific with the process with HMAA to come. All and all, the Kaiser doctors and staff were amazing but being an outer island patient, with the closest pharmacy being an hour away was pretty inconvenient.