Zora Health / Employer guide / Dominican Republic
Support employees through fertility treatment, and keep the talent you have invested in.
Fertility treatment rarely fits around a work calendar, and most employees go through it quietly, often while doing some of their best work. Zora Health helps you build practical fertility support, from policies and manager guidance to confidential care navigation and access to 128+ partner clinics in 16 countries, around your workforce and budget. Companies including Hilton, LinkedIn, Sanofi, HSBC, Mastercard, Carousell and Singapore Management University work with us.
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Five things Dominican HR leaders should know
- The national statistics office (ONE) projects a total fertility rate of 1.97 children per woman in 2026, below the replacement level of about 2.1.
- The Basic Health Plan (PDSS) that SENASA and every other ARS must provide excludes infertility treatment, so employees pay clinics directly: US$5,000 to 8,000 per IVF cycle in a March 2026 estimate.
- We found no law that regulates assisted reproduction, egg donation, surrogacy or egg freezing. Article 55 of the Constitution gives every person the right to form a family and does not mention assisted reproduction.
- There is no fertility leave. Social security pays 14 weeks of maternity subsidy and fathers get 2 days of paternity leave. A Labour Code reform raising this to 4 days lapsed in 2026, and a reintroduced version was withdrawn.
- A fixed annual allowance keeps the employer’s budget predictable.
Why fertility is a business problem for employers
Fertility treatment does not fit around a work calendar. A clinic sets the date of a scan the day before. Egg collection happens when the body is ready, usually about 36 hours after a final trigger injection. Then comes a two-week wait, and for many couples, another cycle. Your team feels it: missed meetings, unexplained absences, a strong performer who suddenly goes quiet.
About 1 in 6 people worldwide are affected by infertility (WHO). In 2025, the president of a Santiago fertility institute estimated that about 20% of the population has difficulty conceiving, without citing a study (CDN, September 2025). We found no Dominican survey on fertility at work. In Carrot‘s 2023 survey of 5,000 people in Canada, India, Mexico, the UK and the US, 79% were uncomfortable discussing fertility at work.
- Resignations. 39% of employees with fertility challenges in Ferring‘s 2025 survey of more than 3,600 employees and employers in Australia, France, Japan, Poland and the UK had left or were considering leaving their job during treatment.
- Lower performance. 55% of Carrot’s 2023 respondents said fertility challenges had hurt their work performance (Carrot, 2023).
- Unequal access. In 2019, 8 of the country’s 11 IVF centres were in Santo Domingo and 3 in Santiago (DR1, 2019); a March 2026 press release from The IVF Group counted 14 clinics (El Nuevo Diario). Staff in other provinces travel for each scan and procedure.
What employers gain
Keep the people you spent the most to develop
Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary, according to Gallup. A written policy, paid time off and a funded allowance can help address barriers that contribute to employee attrition.
Stand out in a tight labour market
65% of Carrot’s 2023 respondents said they would change jobs for fertility benefits (Carrot, 2023). We found no published example of a Dominican employer funding IVF or egg freezing.
Make fertility support financially predictable
Aon put gross medical cost trend in the Dominican Republic at 5.4% in 2025 and reported no figure for 2026 (Aon, 2026). Employers can set annual or lifetime allowances and decide which treatments qualify.
Zora helps employers structure benefits around local treatment costs, Dominican law and workforce needs, so HR can run the programme within an agreed budget.
Want to see what this would look like for your Dominican workforce?
What IVF costs, and what the state pays
There is no official price survey. Prices below come from clinics quoted in the press, mostly in US dollars.
| Item | Typical private price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| IVF cycle | US$5,000 to 8,000 | March 2026 estimate; against US$12,000 to 20,000 in the US |
| IVF cycle | About US$6,000 to 10,000 | April 2025 estimate |
| IVF procedure | RD$400,000 to 500,000 | 2019 estimate; older figure, shown for the peso range |
| Elective egg freezing | About US$6,000 to 7,000 | April 2025 estimate; storage fees not stated |
Sources: El Nuevo Diario, March 2026, citing The IVF Group; elDinero, April 2025, quoting Clínica Procrear; DR1, February 2019, quoting Santo Domingo Fertility Center. We found no published price for intrauterine insemination.
| Item | Public support (or own savings) | What the employee still carries |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Health Plan (PDSS) through SENASA or a private ARS | None: infertility treatment is excluded | The full private price |
| Complementary or voluntary ARS plans | Depends on the plan; we found no published plan that covers IVF | Usually the full private price |
| Elective egg freezing | None; own savings or clinic payment plans (not a subsidy) | The full private price plus storage |
Sources: Article 17(c) of the Regulation on Family Health Insurance and the Basic Health Plan, approved by the National Social Security Council (CNSS) on 10 October 2002, lists “treatments for infertility” among PDSS exclusions (Reglamento del Seguro Familiar de Salud). elDinero, April 2025 reports interest-free payment plans at Clínica Procrear. We found no bill to add fertility treatment to the PDSS.
Age is one of the strongest predictors of IVF success. We found no published success rates for the Dominican Republic alone. Across 204 Latin American registry centres in 16 countries in 2022, the delivery rate per egg collection in fresh IVF or ICSI with a patient’s own eggs was 23.2% at 30 or younger, 18.2% at 34 to 36, 11.7% at 37 to 39 and 4.8% at 40 to 42 (Latin American Registry, 2022 data).
An employee who starts at 40 may need several private cycles, which is why the size of an allowance, and when employees can use it, matter as much as whether you offer one.
Give Employees Access to Fertility Specialists
Help employees navigate fertility care with access to doctors and clinics, treatment information, and clear guidance on IVF, egg freezing and other fertility options. Employees can explore their options privately, without needing to go through HR.
Fertility support that fits your workforce and budget
You do not need to overhaul your existing health insurance to support employees through fertility treatment. Start with awareness and manager education, add confidential one-to-one support, or introduce a funded allowance across your offices. There is no minimum company size.
Where included in the employer programme, eligible employees can use talks and care navigation without paying Zora a separate fee. Care navigation allowances are set in each proposal. Treatment and other third-party costs are paid separately, either by employees or through the fertility allowance their employer provides.
Companies starting the conversation
Essentials
Expert-led talks for employees and managers, fertility and menopause policy templates, manager guides and full access to the Zora app. Up to 2 talks a year.
Employees supported one to one
Navigation
Everything in Essentials, plus confidential one-to-one care navigation and access to our partner clinic network.
Large and multi-country teams
Complete
Everything in Navigation, plus quarterly anonymised reporting, a dedicated account manager and scheduled review meetings with HR.
Optional add-ons can be added to any programme, subject to availability: hormone and fertility diagnostics and telehealth with specialists. Pricing is tailored to your headcount, your countries and the services you choose. Most companies start with a single talk.
Request a proposal See how Zora works for employers
Comparing fertility benefit providers? Use our RFP question bank
Our RFP question bank has 40 questions, with why each one matters, what a good answer looks like and a scoring sheet for three providers. Six of the questions for the Dominican Republic:
- Are local-plan employees covered, or only staff on international health plans?
- Do you require an infertility diagnosis before support starts?
- Which fertility clinics can employees use in Santo Domingo and Santiago, and how do you support staff who live in other provinces?
- How does the benefit work alongside the PDSS exclusion of infertility treatment, SENASA and any private or complementary ARS plan, and does it cover medication, genetic testing and egg or embryo storage?
- With no Dominican law on assisted reproduction, how do you handle egg donation and surrogacy, and what legal guidance do you give employees?
- How is health data handled under Law 172-13, how is consent collected, and what does the employer see?
Your download link appears here as soon as you submit. Zora Health may contact you about employee benefits; see our privacy policy.
Plan your fertility benefit budget
Fertility benefit budget planner
Model the annual claims budget for a fertility allowance. Change any number.
This is a claims budget, not a Zora quotation. Zora’s programme fees, implementation and optional services are separate.
Illustration only. Utilisation is an editable assumption, not observed Zora data. The calculation assumes each user claims their full annual allowance, and excludes programme fees and setup costs. For a tailored model, request an employer proposal.
Estimate the potential workforce impact of fertility challenges
A rough planning scenario. It applies a global infertility estimate to your headcount, so it is not a prediction for your workforce, a measured loss or a forecast of savings from any programme.
Range: RD$4,510,000 to RDclass=”zc-note o-rng”>Range: 2,760,000 a year, depending on replacement cost.
Assumptions: infertility affects about 1 in 6 adults (World Health Organization, 2023), applied to employees aged 25 to 44. Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary (Gallup, 2019); the headline uses the low end. Absence is valued at salary divided by 250 working days. Exit rate and days lost are your own assumptions.
This is a hypothetical cost scenario, not a prediction of actual employee departures, an estimate of Zora’s financial impact or a guaranteed saving from fertility benefits.
Already have corporate health insurance? Here is where Zora fits
Your medical plan may cover some consultations and tests, but fertility treatment is often limited or excluded, so check your policy wording. Employees still need to understand their options, the public funding they qualify for and which clinic suits them.
Zora works alongside your existing insurance and benefits. We help employees get reliable information, navigate their care options and reach suitable specialists, and we give HR manager guidance, policy templates and, on the Complete programme, anonymised reporting. You strengthen fertility support without replacing your medical plan.
How Zora works
For your employees
Employees join the Zora app with a company code, or single sign-on for larger teams. They can learn about fertility and egg freezing, understand what your benefit covers, book a confidential care navigation call and find partner clinics and specialists.
For HR
- Kick-off, week 1. Agree goals, countries and which employees are eligible.
- Policy and benefit design, weeks 2 to 4. Draft or update your fertility policy using our templates.
- Launch, typically weeks 4 to 6. A launch talk for employees and managers, plus a communications pack for HR to send.
- Live support. Employees book care navigation calls and use the Zora app.
- Reporting, every 3 months, on the Complete programme. Anonymised usage, common themes and our recommendations, reviewed with your account manager.
Privacy
Employee privacy is central to our programmes. On the Complete programme, routine employer reports contain aggregated engagement and utilisation information, with safeguards to prevent identification of individual employees. On every programme, personal health information is not included in standard HR reporting, and employees can get help without telling their manager. Where eligibility checks or claims administration need individual-level data, access is limited to authorised parties for defined purposes, as agreed in writing before launch. Employee data is handled in line with Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act and the Dominican Republic’s Law 172-13 on the Protection of Personal Data, which treats health data as sensitive personal data.
Clinics and doctors in the Dominican Republic
Zora’s clinic and doctor directory does not list providers in the Dominican Republic yet. It lists 421 clinics and 1,185 doctors across 25 countries, mostly in Asia Pacific and the Middle East (browse clinics or browse doctors). Employees in the Dominican Republic can still use Zora’s education and the Zora app. Ask us how your team in the Dominican Republic would use Zora before you launch. See Zora’s employer guides for every country.
Rules and eligibility in the Dominican Republic
Who can use assisted reproduction
The Dominican Republic has no law that regulates assisted reproduction (Chevalier, Juristemas, 2025). A draft Family Code sent to Congress in 2014 included an article on medically assisted procreation; we found no record of it becoming law. Article 55 of the Constitution gives every person the right to form a family, protects motherhood whatever a woman’s marital status and says the State protects the family on the basis of marriage between a man and a woman; it does not mention assisted reproduction (Constitución, art. 55).
Egg donation, surrogacy and egg freezing
No legal framework regulates surrogacy agreements and no court has ruled on one, so the legal position of a birth mother and intended parents is unclear; some couples arrange surrogacy abroad (Moricete and Romero, 2023). We found no law setting an age limit or storage period for egg freezing or rules on donation. The 2 Dominican centres in the Latin American Registry reported 89 egg donation cycles and 20 fertility preservation cycles in 2022 (Latin American Registry).
Maternity and paternity leave, but no fertility leave
Since March 2017, social security has paid 14 weeks of maternity subsidy under CNSS Resolution 418-02, applying ILO Convention 183; the Labour Code text still says 12 weeks (Diario Libre, March 2017). The subsidy requires 8 months of contributions in the 12 months before birth (DIDA, 2023). Fathers have 2 days of paid leave under Article 54 of the Labour Code. In ruling TC/0901/23, dated 27 December 2023 in the published text (Diario Libre reported the decision on 30 October 2023), the Constitutional Court found this indirectly discriminatory and gave Congress two years from notification to revise it (Diario Libre).
Labour Code reform lapsed, then withdrawn
The Senate passed a reform in July 2025 that would raise paternity leave from 2 to 4 working days and maternity leave from 12 to 14 weeks (Diario Libre, July 2025). The Chamber of Deputies approved it at first reading (Zol FM, June 2026), but it lapsed when the session ended. A senator reintroduced it on 27 August 2026 (Siempre al Día) and withdrew it after union federations rejected it; by 26 October 2026 it had not been resubmitted, and Law 16-92 remains in force (Diario Libre, October 2026).
Pregnancy protection and health data
Under Article 232 of the Labour Code, notice of termination (desahucio) given during pregnancy or up to 3 months after birth is void. Under Article 233, dismissal because of pregnancy is void, and any dismissal during pregnancy or within 6 months of birth must first go to the labour authorities; otherwise the employer owes 5 months’ ordinary salary on top of the usual termination payments (Labour Code text, SEGIB). Law 172-13 of December 2013 treats health data as sensitive personal data. Employees can bring habeas data claims; there is no national data protection authority for private companies (DLA Piper, Pellerano & Herrera). A bill before Congress in May 2026 would create one (ECIJA, May 2026).
Why employers choose Zora
Companies including Hilton, LinkedIn, Sanofi, HSBC, Mastercard, Carousell and Singapore Management University work with Zora Health. We work alongside your existing insurance, helping employees use the cover they already have and find suitable specialists based on their needs.
Trying to conceive with a heavy workload took a toll on my husband and me. It helped us understand our options.
Questions HR teams ask us
Is fertility leave mandatory in the Dominican Republic?
No. Social security pays 14 weeks of maternity subsidy and fathers have 2 days of paternity leave under the Labour Code, and no law gives leave for fertility treatment. Time off for appointments depends on employer policy.
Do SENASA or private ARS plans pay for IVF?
Not under the Basic Health Plan. The 2002 regulation on Family Health Insurance lists treatments for infertility among the exclusions of the PDSS, which SENASA and private ARS must provide. Complementary plans vary, and we found no published plan that covers IVF, so most employees pay clinics directly.
Is egg freezing legal in the Dominican Republic?
Clinics offer egg freezing and we found no law that bans it or sets an age limit or storage period, because the country has no law on assisted reproduction. Clinics quoted about US$6,000 to 7,000 in 2025. Employees should confirm storage terms with the clinic in writing.
Does Zora replace our health insurance?
No. Zora works alongside your insurance. We help employees understand their options, find suitable specialists and use the cover they already have.
How much does a fertility benefit cost an employer?
It depends on the allowance, eligibility and expected uptake. Use the budget planner on this page for a first estimate, then ask us for a tailored proposal based on your headcount and countries.
How quickly can we launch?
Typically 4 to 6 weeks from contract to launch, depending on scope and countries. Most companies start with a single talk.
Related guides for Dominican employers
Build a fertility benefit for your team
Whether you are introducing fertility benefits for the first time or improving an existing programme, tell us your headcount, countries and priorities. We will come back within two working days with suitable services, an indicative budget and a practical rollout plan for your Dominican team. No obligation.
Not ready to talk yet? Explore how Zora works
Sources
- Acento, República Dominicana encaminada hacia una población más envejecida y con menos nacimientos (ONE, Estimaciones y Proyecciones Nacionales de Población 1950 to 2100), 23 June 2026
- elDinero, Por cada 100 hombres ocupados, menos de 65 mujeres tienen empleo en RD (ONE, Panorama Estadístico, September 2025), 23 October 2025
- Latin American Registry of Assisted Reproduction, ART in Latin America: the Latin American Registry, 2022, JBRA Assisted Reproduction 2026;30(2)
- Latin American Registry, 2022, Table 1: cycles by country
- Latin American Registry, 2022, Table 2: outcomes by age
- CNSS, Reglamento sobre el Seguro Familiar de Salud y el Plan Básico de Salud, 10 October 2002 (TSS)
- El Nuevo Diario, Lanzan en RD la primera plataforma digital dedicada a promover y concientizar sobre reproducción asistida, 16 March 2026
- elDinero, Congelación de óvulos, opción costosa para preservar la fertilidad, 10 April 2025
- DR1, In vitro fertilization in the country, 20 February 2019
- CDN, Infertilidad en parejas dominicanas, un reto creciente, 12 September 2025
- Aon, Global Medical Trend Rates Report 2026
- Chevalier Caraballo, Maternidad subrogada: aspectos ético y jurídico en el derecho dominicano, Juristemas No. 9, 2025
- Moricete and Romero, The Dominican Republic, in Surrogacy in Latin America, Intersentia 2023 (Cambridge)
- Constitución de la República Dominicana, Article 55 (Justia)
- Diario Libre, Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Social ordena pagar 14 semanas de salario por maternidad, 30 March 2017
- Tribunal Constitucional, Sentencia TC/0901/23, 27 December 2023
- Diario Libre, TC elimina los dos días de la licencia de paternidad, 30 October 2023
- Diario Libre, Los principales cambios de la reforma laboral, 16 July 2025
- Zol FM, Diputados retoman reforma al Código de Trabajo, 5 June 2026
- Siempre al Día, Reforma al Código de Trabajo en República Dominicana, updated 10 September 2026
- DLA Piper, Data Protection Laws of the World: Dominican Republic
- Pellerano & Herrera, Ley 172-13 sobre Protección de Datos de Carácter Personal
- SEGIB, Textos legales República Dominicana: Código de Trabajo (Ley 16-92), Articles 232 and 233
- DIDA, ABC No. 27 sobre Subsidio por Maternidad, February 2023
- Diario Libre, Copardom espera retomar el diálogo frente a la reforma laboral en RD, 26 October 2026
- ECIJA, El proyecto de ley de protección de datos: por qué las empresas no deberían esperar su aprobación para prepararse, 21 May 2026
- Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Fertility Matters at Work and This Can Happen, workplace fertility survey, November 2025
- Carrot Fertility, Global Fertility at Work report, 2023
- Gallup, This fixable problem costs US businesses $1 trillion, 2019
- World Health Organization, 1 in 6 people globally affected by infertility, April 2023
Information on this page is correct as of 5 November 2026. Laws, public funding, insurance rules and treatment costs change often, so check current rules with the relevant authority, insurer or a qualified adviser before making decisions. This page is general information, not legal, financial, tax or medical advice.