Having performed over 45,000 vasectomies, Dr. Stein is one of the world's foremost trainers of the art of performing a quick and elegant vasectomy with negligible discomfort. He has trained over 190 clinicians who have come to his Tampa/Lutz office from all over the world, most from the USA, Canada, and Australia, some from Africa, Europe, and South America. Because fingertip sensory and motor function is so important, the first steps of vasectomy (accessing the vas) are more like playing a guitar than like other forms of surgery, which are almost all performed under direct vision. But it takes time and practice to "get the feel" for separating the vas from other elements of the spermatic cord. Trainees pay Dr. Stein on a per-case basis, and some of that payment is transferred to the patient in the form of a reduced fee. If the training-case-vasectomy were an unpleasant process, patients would write poor reviews and we would be unable to find future patients willing to be training cases. So "training cases" take longer and involve more manipulation, but Dr. Stein does all he can to still make it a pleasant experience. On training days, Dr. Stein performs some of the vasectomies himself as "observation cases", for which the discount is not offered. During observation cases, the trainee may be asked to feel the vas tubes before he or she observes while Dr. Stein performs the vasectomy.
At all locations, a deposit of $150 is required to schedule a vasectomy, unless your procedure is being covered under Title 10 through your county health department. Except for training cases, the deposit is fully refundable until 7 calendar days prior to the appointed vasectomy date, non-refundable thereafter for either cancellation or postponement. Later cancellations leave us with open appointments that might gladly have been taken by men who had to choose later dates because of full schedules on earlier dates, but those same men often cannot take open dates with less than one week notice.
For training cases, we require the full discounted payment at the time of scheduling, refundable until 14 calendar days prior to the appointed vasectomy date, non-refundable thereafter for either cancellation or postponement. . Visiting doctors travel hundreds or thousands of miles for the opportunity to learn under Dr. Stein's close scrutiny, and they cannot learn if training cases cancel on short notice. We have had some patients "walk away" from deposits, but men very rarely cancel or postpone after paying the discounted rate in full.
