How we check every fact

Where our facts come from

We use two kinds of sources, and we keep them apart.

• Medical guidance comes from the patient pages of named medical bodies: ASRM (through ReproductiveFacts.org), ACOG, the CDC, and MedlinePlus from the NIH's National Library of Medicine.
• Program facts come from each provider's own official pages, such as its program, pricing, eligibility and policy pages.

Every source is listed at the bottom of this page with its publisher, what we used it for and the date we last checked it. Wherever a fact appears on the site, its checked date appears with it.

Four kinds of statement, kept separate

• Medical guidance. What a medical body publishes for patients, like ASRM's timeline for when to ask for an evaluation. We quote it or stay close to its words, and we name the source.
• A provider's claim. What a provider says about itself, like a medical director's credentials or a rating. We show it as the provider's statement, with the date we read it. We don't verify it independently unless we say so.
• Your situation. What you tell the Care Path Check. It's used in your browser to apply the rules below, and nowhere else.
• An outcome. Whether a treatment works for a particular couple. We never predict this.

How the Plain-Terms Sheets work

Each care option gets the same card, with the same fields in the same order:

• What it is: the option, in one or two plain sentences.
• Who it's for, and who it's not for: the eligibility the source states.
• What's included, and what's not: as the source lists them. If a source doesn't list something, we don't add it.
• Where it's available: the states served or excluded, as published.
• What the price covers, and the price: what the price includes, and whether the amount is published. We never estimate a price.
• How long it takes: only if the source says.
• If testing finds something that needs a clinic: what the source says happens next.
• What happens after: the next stage the source describes.
• For both of you: her part and his part, side by side. When a step involves only one of you, we say so.

Every field has one of three statuses:

• Verified: confirmed on the cited page on the date shown.
• Unknown: the official pages we checked don't say. We show "Unknown" and link the pages we checked.
• Not published: the provider describes the thing but doesn't publish the detail, like a price shown only during its intake.

Unknown never means zero, free or affordable. It never makes an option look cheaper, simpler or more likely to work.

How the Care Path Check decides

The Care Path Check asks three questions: where you are in your journey; your situation (who it's for, whether you're 18 or older, where you live, and for a female-male couple, her age and any reasons to go sooner); and what matters most to you.

Then it applies, in order:

1. The published timeline from ASRM, ACOG and the CDC: ask for an evaluation after 12 months of trying if she's under 35, after 6 months at 35 or older, and now if she's older than 40, and sooner if certain conditions apply.
2. Each option's own stated eligibility, such as Gala's requirement that both partners be 18 or older.
3. What matters most to you, which adds notes but never changes which options fit or the order they're shown in.

The rules are deterministic: the same answers always give the same result. They're covered by automated tests, and the full rule table is printed on the Care Path Check page so anyone can audit it.

The check will never diagnose a condition, predict whether you'll get pregnant, choose a treatment for you, or show a price that isn't published. "Talk with your OB/GYN or a specialist first" is a real result, and the check gives it whenever the rules point there, even when that means sending you away from a program we may earn money from.

Where the age boundary falls

ACOG says "older than 35." ASRM and the CDC say "35 or older." We use the earlier point, so at 35 the six-month rule applies.

What we haven't verified

• Prices for the OB/GYN and clinic options. They aren't published in general terms, so we show them as unknown.
• The full list of states Gala serves. Gala publishes its exclusions (New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island) and says its intake checks availability in your state.
• The credentials of Gala's medical director, which we show as Gala publishes them.
• The rating Gala cites, which Gala says comes from patients of its other programs.

Challenge a fact

If you think something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and choose "Correction." We'll recheck the source, fix what's wrong, update the checked date and log the correction in our editorial policy.

Sources