Contact:
Patty Stull
SGFRSC
Director of Marketing
(O): 301-545-1302
(C): 301-928-0825

June 1, 2007

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND - Shady Grove Fertility Reproductive Science Center announced that effective today it has acquired the Greater Baltimore Medical Center Fertility Center in Baltimore, which will be renamed Shady Grove Fertility at GBMC.

Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, with nine offices throughout the Washington metropolitan area, Shady Grove Fertility is currently the largest provider of fertility treatment technologies in the United States. In operation since 1984, GBMC Fertility Center is the leading fertility center serving the Baltimore area. The acquisition was many months in the making because of the number of parties involved -- Shady Grove Fertility, IntegraMed America (a business partner of Shady Grove Fertility), and the Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

According to Shady Grove Fertility's chief executive officer, Mark Segal, the idea to connect the clinical and administrative services of the two established entities sprang from the recognition that the metropolitan Baltimore area was under-served in terms of infertility treatment. "We were getting increasing numbers of requests from patients and insurers to consider a presence in Baltimore. When we explored the possibilities, certainly the best provider we saw in terms of clinical excellence and synergy was GBMC. So, it's a natural partnership that makes sense."

GBMC’s fertility medical team includes Dr. Eugene Katz, Dr. Ricardo Yazigi and Wende Allen, P.A. "Joining Shady Grove Fertility provides the opportunity to take our practice to the next level,” explains Dr. Katz. “We are now part of a larger, more progressive fertility practice comprised of 21 reproductive endocrinologists, plus PhD scientists and geneticists as well as 300 highly specialized staff.” Dr. Katz continues, “The treatment outcomes at Shady Grove Fertility are among the best in the nation so we feel very comfortable that our pregnancy rates will remain as high as they have been in previous years.

Another benefit of the merger is that the new Shady Grove Fertility at GBMC will be the only center in Baltimore to offer patients the highly popular Shared Risk 100 percent Refund program for patients undergoing In Vitro Fertilization or donor egg treatment. Even though the state of Maryland mandates IVF as a covered health benefit for its residents, the mandate has significant limitations and an estimated 40 percent of couples do not have health insurance coverage for IVF treatment. In 1994, Shady Grove Fertility innovated, and was the first fertility program to implement, the Shared Risk program that guaranteed treatment results as the birth of a baby or 100 percent money back for patients.

On an annual basis, it is now estimated that five of every 10 IVF treatments performed in the Baltimore-Washington DC area will be through Shady Grove Fertility Reproductive Science Center.