South Jersey Fertility Center (Marlton, NJ): Patient Guide

South Jersey Fertility Center has been the region's destination reproductive endocrinology practice since 1989 — more than three decades before most of the venture-backed fertility chains operating today had a single location open. The flagship clinic sits at 400 Lippincott Drive, Suite 130, in Marlton, the commercial and medical hub of Burlington County that sits directly on the Route 73 corridor connecting South Jersey to the greater Philadelphia metro. Two satellite offices extend the practice's footprint: one in Sewell (Gloucester County) and one in Egg Harbor Township, putting the clinic within practical reach of patients from Camden and Burlington counties, the Jersey Shore corridor, and across the Delaware River in the Philadelphia suburbs. Patients rating the practice have given it a 4.5-star average across more than 232 Google reviews — a strong signal of sustained quality for a high-volume IVF center where emotions run close to the surface and even good outcomes can generate complicated feelings. For a broader view of options in the state, see fertility clinics in New Jersey.

Physicians and Clinical Team

South Jersey Fertility Center distinguishes itself as the only multi-physician fertility practice in South Jersey in which every physician carries board certification in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility (REI) — the subspecialty that requires a full ACGME-accredited fellowship after completing an OB/GYN residency. That credential matters because REI fellowship training involves intensive hands-on experience with IVF laboratory technique, complex ovarian stimulation protocols, and the surgical skills needed for minimally invasive reproductive procedures. The four-physician team brings complementary areas of depth:

Stephen Sawin, MD, FACOG — Medical Director. Dr. Sawin has been with South Jersey Fertility Center since 2002 and has been selected as a Top Physician by Castle Connolly for eleven consecutive years — a peer-nominated distinction that carries more weight than patient-popularity metrics. He has also been named Top Physician by South Jersey Magazine multiple years running. Patients frequently cite his ability to explain complex treatment plans clearly and to communicate in a way that reduces anxiety without minimizing the difficulty of the process. Dr. Sawin completed his REI fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the country's pre-eminent academic medical centers in reproductive medicine.

Peter Van Deerlin, MD, FACOG — Director of the IVF Program. Dr. Van Deerlin joined South Jersey Fertility Center in 1997 and has been central to building the practice's IVF program over nearly three decades. He trained in REI at the University of Pennsylvania alongside Dr. Sawin, and his long tenure at the clinic means that much of the institutional knowledge embedded in the practice's laboratory protocols and stimulation approaches reflects his direct influence. He has been recognized by South Jersey Magazine and has served in a leadership capacity within regional reproductive medicine circles.

Oumar Kuzbari, MD, FACOG — Director of the Diminished Ovarian Reserve and Fertility Preservation Programs. Dr. Kuzbari is double board certified in both Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, and he completed his REI fellowship at the University of Utah. His focus on diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) — a diagnosis that requires careful, individualized stimulation strategies and candid counseling about realistic outcomes — reflects a clinical subspecialty within the broader IVF world that demands particular expertise. His leadership of the fertility preservation program also positions the practice well for oncofertility patients who need rapid consultation before cancer treatment.

Lauren E. Weissmann, MD, MSCE — Director of Donor Services. Dr. Weissmann is double board certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, and she holds a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology (MSCE) from the University of Pennsylvania — a research credential that signals both advanced quantitative training and familiarity with interpreting clinical evidence. She has been named Top Doctor for Women by South Jersey Magazine and completed her training at Penn. Her direction of the donor services program encompasses the coordination of egg donation, donor embryo, and gestational carrier cases — the logistically and ethically complex cases that benefit from a physician who is both clinically and administratively experienced in third-party reproduction.

Supporting the physician team are four board-certified Advanced Practice Nurses — Tracy Krause, APN-C; Dana Dionot, APN-C; Margarita Dorfman, APN-C; and Morgan Lake, APN-C — who handle much of the monitoring, medication instruction, and cycle coordination that keeps an active IVF program running smoothly. A dedicated patient concierge rounds out the care team structure.

Services and Treatments

South Jersey Fertility Center offers a complete menu of reproductive medicine services:

• In vitro fertilization (IVF) — including ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) for male-factor cases
• Frozen embryo transfer (FET)
• Preimplantation genetic testing (PGT-A) — chromosomal screening of embryos before transfer
• Endometrial receptivity assay (ERA) — timing optimization for patients with recurrent implantation failure
• Intrauterine insemination (IUI) — a less invasive first-line treatment
• Ovulation induction and augmentation
• Egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) — both elective and medical fertility preservation
• Oncofertility — emergency fertility preservation for patients facing cancer treatment
• Donor egg IVF
• Donor embryo transfer
• Donor sperm insemination
• Gestational carrier (surrogacy) coordination
• Tubal reversal surgery
• Hysteroscopy — in-office uterine evaluation and treatment
• Laparoscopy — minimally invasive surgical diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis, fibroids, and adhesions
• Comprehensive fertility testing — hormonal panels, semen analysis, genetic carrier screening, and anatomical imaging

The range reflects a practice built to handle straightforward first-consultation cases and surgically complex recurrent failure cases under the same roof — an advantage for patients who want continuity of care rather than referrals to outside surgical or genetic specialists.

Laboratory and Success Rates

The embryology laboratory at South Jersey Fertility Center is the operational core of the IVF program, and Dr. Van Deerlin's nearly 30-year focus on that program is reflected in what SART data shows. According to the most recent data published through the CDC's Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance and the SART Clinic Summary Report (Clinic ID 2181), South Jersey Fertility Center performed 1,005 total cycles in the most recent reporting year — a volume level that indicates a mature, high-throughput laboratory rather than a low-volume practice.

Live birth rates per transfer from the clinic's own eggs show:

For donor egg recipients, the clinic reports a 43.4% live birth rate across 53 recipient starts — consistent with what a well-functioning program using high-quality cryopreserved donor eggs should achieve. SART's own guidance cautions against direct clinic-to-clinic comparisons without accounting for patient mix, case complexity, and reporting methodology, and that caveat applies here: a clinic that accepts high-DOR patients or older intended parents will show lower aggregate statistics than one that screens out difficult cases. Our IVF treatment overview explains how to read these figures in context of your own diagnosis.

Patient Experience

A 4.5-star rating across hundreds of reviews at a busy IVF clinic is not accidental. Fertility treatment creates the conditions for negative reviews — failed cycles, stressful monitoring schedules, large out-of-pocket expenses, and the emotional weight of infertility itself. For a clinic to hold a strong rating at volume, the patient experience infrastructure has to work at a systems level, not just in isolated exceptional encounters.

Across publicly available reviews, several themes appear consistently for South Jersey Fertility Center. Patients note that the nursing team — particularly the APN coordinators — is responsive, proactive about communicating results, and attentive to the anxiety that accompanies every monitoring appointment and two-week wait. Dr. Sawin is frequently described as someone who takes time to explain treatment in plain language and who maintains a calm, grounding presence during anxious consultations. The evening office hours the practice offers — unusual for an REI practice — reduce the burden on working patients who cannot easily take early-morning appointments. The multi-location model (Marlton, Sewell, Egg Harbor Township) means that monitoring visits and follow-up appointments can happen closer to where patients live, reducing the cumulative logistical burden of a multi-week stimulation cycle.

Considering At-Home Insemination?

Not every fertility journey begins in a clinic. At-home intracervical insemination (ICI) is a lower-cost, private option that suits patients with no known fertility diagnosis — including single parents by choice, same-sex couples, and people who want to try a few cycles before committing to clinical treatment.

At-home insemination kits like those from MakeAMom come with step-by-step instructions designed for donor or partner sperm. Kits are a one-time purchase that can be reused until conception succeeds, require no clinic visit, and arrive in plain, discreet packaging. Many patients use them as a first step while working toward a fertility consultation — or alongside ovulation tracking while they wait for an appointment slot.

If you have a known fertility diagnosis, have been trying for 12 months without success (six months if you're over 35), or your physician has already recommended IUI or IVF, a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist is the right next step.

Insurance and Financing

New Jersey operates under one of the country's more comprehensive fertility insurance mandates. Fully insured health plans covering groups of 50 or more employees — where the employer's headquarters is in New Jersey — are required to cover medically necessary fertility treatment, including IVF. The mandate covers up to four completed egg retrievals per lifetime, IVF with donor eggs, and IVF where the embryo is transferred to a gestational carrier. Self-insured employers (those that fund their own claims rather than purchasing insurance from a carrier) are generally exempt from the state mandate, as are employers with fewer than 50 employees and certain religious organizations. Whether your plan qualifies depends on how your employer's benefits are structured — a question worth asking your HR department or plan administrator before your first consultation.

South Jersey Fertility Center maintains an Aetna Center of Excellence designation and accepts most major insurance carriers. The practice provides patients with a detailed insurance confirmation package before treatment begins. Financial counselors are available to walk through benefits, prior authorization timelines (medical necessity letters can take up to 30 days; prior authorizations typically take 7–15 business days), and limitations such as lifetime benefit maximums. For patients whose coverage is incomplete or absent, the practice offers loan financing options and one-on-one financial counseling to identify assistance programs. The comprehensive fertility insurance by state guide is a useful starting point for understanding what New Jersey's mandate does and does not require.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes South Jersey Fertility Center different from other IVF clinics in South Jersey?

It is the only multi-physician fertility practice in South Jersey where every physician carries board certification in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility. The four-physician team brings a combined tenure at the practice spanning nearly 30 years, a level of institutional continuity that is rare in an era of consolidation and physician turnover. The 1,005-cycle annual volume reported through SART places it among the higher-volume programs in New Jersey, which typically correlates with well-trained embryology staff and refined laboratory protocols.

Does the clinic treat patients with diminished ovarian reserve or poor prognosis?

Yes. Dr. Kuzbari leads the practice's Diminished Ovarian Reserve Program specifically, which means the clinic has a structured approach to these cases rather than treating them as routine IVF with modified protocols. DOR patients may also be candidates for the practice's egg donation and donor embryo programs if their own-egg prognosis is poor after a thorough workup. The ERA (endometrial receptivity assay) is also available for patients with recurrent implantation failure.

Does New Jersey insurance cover IVF at South Jersey Fertility Center?

New Jersey's mandate requires coverage for IVF in most fully insured large-group plans. The clinic accepts most major carriers and holds Aetna Center of Excellence status. However, coverage depends on whether your specific plan is subject to the NJ mandate — self-insured plans are commonly exempt. The practice's financial counselors can help verify benefits before treatment begins. See our fertility clinics in New Jersey directory for additional context on navigating coverage in the state.

How do I get started as a new patient?

South Jersey Fertility Center accepts online appointment requests through its website at sjfert.com. New patient consultations are available at all three locations. The Marlton main office can be reached at (856) 596-2233. Evening office hours are available, which is particularly useful for patients with daytime scheduling constraints.