Ashlee (right) is holding Eleanor who is two years old this month and her partner Lauren (left) is holding Edie who was born in February 2024.
When Ashlee Rineer and her wife Lauren began fertility treatments in 2020 they were driving back and forth to Radnor, PA—about 75 minutes each way before they started their workdays, multiple times a week. The couple lives in Lancaster, where Ashlee works at Penn Medicine Lancaster General health as a health promotion specialist in Community Wellness.
The young family says it was worth driving to Penn Medicine Radnor because it helped them achieve their dream of parenthood. But not having a practice closer to home to receive the treatments they needed was burdensome.
For their second child, those long drive times were history. That’s because two years ago, to meet the needs of the patients in south-central Pennsylvania, Penn Medicine opened a Penn Fertility Care location in Lancaster, PA. The new clinic allows patients outside of the Philadelphia metro area equal access to the full range of Penn Fertility services and treatments, while staying close to home.
The Lancaster practice is the first and only fertility clinic in Lancaster County which has an Embryology lab, where patients can go through egg retrieval or embryo transfer as part of a course of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Patients in the past would have had to travel to Radnor or Philadelphia to access the full breadth of these treatments. The clinic also offers a suite of other fertility services like intrauterine insemination (IUI), monitoring, ultrasounds and lab work.
Since the first patients started coming to the Lancaster location, the patients and employees are now celebrating their first babies being born through the practice.
Lancaster’s newest residents make their arrival
Despite a difficult beginning, Rineer was one of the first Lancaster clinic patients to give birth, with the arrival of daughter Edie in February 2024; the Rineers’ first child, Eleanor, now 2 years old, was conceived through Penn’s Radnor practice.
“Eleanor and Edie are from the same egg retrieval—they actually might be twins,” Rineer said.
Rineer says that transitioning to the Lancaster clinic was like coming home. She already personally knew many of the employees and patients and felt like the ones she didn’t know could be new friends.
“Growing up, I experienced a lot of homophobia, but the Lancaster team showed that they are open-minded, experienced, and they made both me and my wife feel accepted,” she continued.
While Ashlee and Lauren, and other LGBTQ+ couples, come into treatment knowing the pathway they will need to pursue to build a family, many couples come to the practice due to infertility; they have been trying to build a family but haven’t been successful in doing so.
What brings you in?
Carly Albright Keller, her husband Justin, and their 10-month-old baby Rory.
Carly Albright Keller knew she was going to have trouble conceiving due to a polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) diagnosis. PCOS can affect fertility, or make it harder to conceive, due to irregular periods and hormone imbalances.
Keller, who works as a nurse practitioner with LG Health Physicians Senior Specialists, went through IUI treatment from December through April 2022. The arduous treatment plan was not successful, and after experiencing the grief of a miscarriage, the couple decided to switch to IVF at the Lancaster clinic in September 2022.
Keller says the year was exhausting, and the fear of not being parents at the end of all the physical and emotional labor weighed heavy on their hearts.
The couple conceived on their first round of IVF and after being monitored for about two months, “graduated” from the clinic.
Their baby boy Rory is now 10 months old, and his parents and daycare agree that he is an “angel.”
“Daycare asks us if he is always this happy; we think it’s maybe a reward for having to go through such a difficult journey,” Keller said.
She adds that the fertility benefit was a huge asset to her as an LG Health employee, and when she is interviewing potential new employees, she always mentions it to those who are interested in growing their family. “It really gave us the power to decide to be parents.”
Get to know the new practice
Alisha Pinkerton, PA-C (left), a physician assistant at Penn Fertility Care Lancaster, and Christine Skiadas, MD (right), medical director, Penn Fertility Care at Lancaster General Health.
Opening during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the clinic offered limited capacity while the team recruited a leader—a medical director that would be able to offer the personalized, advanced fertility treatment that Lancaster patients needed.
Christine Skiadas, MD has been connected with Penn Medicine since she completed her undergrad at UPenn and medical school at Perelman School of Medicine.
“The thing that drew me to the position in Lancaster was the opportunity to form deeper relationships with the patients and to get to know the community, as well as the existing team who was already doing work to improve access to care,” Skiadas said.
In addition to serving patients battling infertility and those in the LBGTQ+ community, the clinic also sees cancer patients looking to preserve their chances of parenthood before they begin treatment through sperm and egg freezing.
Skiadas credits the team for the positive experiences patients have had to date.
“This clinic would not function without every single team member that we have—it's very much a team sport,” she said. “It is one of the best office practice cultures I have ever been a part of in terms of collaboration and our approach to care.”