Fertility Group Opens Surgery Center in Lower Manhattan

This article originally appeared on Crain’s New York Business on April 18th, 2019.

Kofinas Fertility Group has opened an ambulatory surgery center at 65 Broadway in Lower Manhattan.

The 10,000-square-foot Manhattan Reproductive Surgery Center will focus on the treatment of endometriosis and uterine fibroids as well as the cryopreservation of ovarian tissue for oncology patients needing chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

Before the surgery center’s opening this week, the fertility group’s physicians operated at local hospitals, said founder and Medical Director Dr. George Kofinas. Time constraints from operating outside of its own facility hindered the amount of surgeries its physicians could perform and the amount of time they could spend with patients, he said.

“It was time for us to really build something that would be designed from scratch to cater to those particular patients that need these services that we offer,” Kofinas said

“The very first thing we had in mind was accessibility,” he added. The Lower Manhattan facility is centrally located for patients from all five boroughs and within blocks of nearly all subway lines as well as the PATH train. The project’s cost was in the millions of dollars, he said.

All in-vitro fertilization and fertility-preservation surgeries performed at the center will be covered by commercial health insurance in companies with at least 100 employees, effective in January 2020, the fertility group noted. Expanded coverage is a result of the recently enacted state budget.

Kofinas Fertility Group was founded in 1987 and has locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island. It currently consists of seven physicians. It hired two last year ahead of the center’s opening, and an additional two will be added soon, Kofinas said.

The fertility group sees about 10% growth in demand for its services annually, he said. To date, the group’s physicians have helped bring more than 25,000 babies into the world.