Our Proprietary Process For Shipping Oocytes
At The World Egg Bank, we strive to make our shipping and receiving procedures as straight forward as possible. For this reason, our shipping procedure starts days to weeks ahead of the planned shipping date. As soon as a patient has finalized the details of obtaining their eggs, an email is sent from the shipping team to the receiving clinic detailing the patient’s name, selected donor number, and date that we can ship the order, along with an estimated delivery date. This email asks for confirmation from the clinic that the proposed date(s) work, the shipping address is correct, and that the list of embryologists verified to perform our warming technique is up to date. Once we receive confirmation that all information provided is accurate and approved, the shipment is placed on the shipping team calendar and the proposed date is entered into the recipient’s file on our custom-built database.
Scheduling Shipments
To streamline the process, while managing clinic and patient expectations, we’ve learned how to limit the amount of potential weekend-time that the tanks are in transit by scheduling domestic shipments to Tuesdays and international shipments to Thursdays. The day prior to shipping, all paperwork and airway bills are created and the tanks to be used are filled with liquid nitrogen to ensure that they are charged and ready for their journey. The day of shipment, all orders are carefully packed and ready for pick up by 11:00 AM. This level of detail ensures a consistent process for every shipment that leaves our facility, thus nearly eliminating any unforeseen variables.
Verifying New Clinics
The process of shipping oocytes differs slightly for new clinics vs verified clinics. For clinics who have not worked with us before, we require them to go through our “verification process.” This is akin to training, but is limited to understanding and proper technique for our warming protocol only. Final authorization for performing any warming is left to the discretion of the laboratory director. When initially contacting a new clinic, a small packet of paperwork is sent that explains the details of our process. This packet asks for a short equipment list to be filled out to ensure the clinic has the proper equipment to perform the task, and for information on the nearest airport and travel accommodations for our verifying embryologist. Once we receive this paperwork, the warming date can be established. Two weeks prior to the warming date the eggs are shipped from our facility. In that shipment is a packet containing a letter detailing the verification procedure, extra warming dishes, extra warming media, and a blank vitrification device. In the tank with the oocytes is one practice oocyte per embryologist being verified.
While sounding complex, these procedures are highly coordinated. Our top priority in the shipping department is to ensure success in transit. By putting these procedures in place, we have perfected minimizing issues related to the transit of oocytes.
