The criteria are factors of your personal and family history that are suggestive of a hereditary cancer syndrome. They help guide who has a higher likelihood of having one of these syndromes as they are typically quite rare and we want to focus our efforts on people with an elevated chance of benefiting from the results. Unfortunately, insurance often uses the same criteria for determining whether they will cover genetic testing.

That being said, I do see patients in clinic who don't meet these criteria but are still interested in testing and they often just pay the $250. If someone really wants the information, I'd rather they do it through a genetic counselor who can fully explain the testing as well as any results that come back than to find some other way of doing it themselves and possibly getting untrustworthy results, results they don't know how to interpret, or even the wrong test for what they were trying to learn.

I've had some patients who had gone to significant lengths to get testing done themselves and then an odd result comes up... They still end up in our clinic and may even need to get confirmatory testing at a reputable lab to confirm their initial result! My job isn't to be a barrier to testing, it's to empower patients by helping them understand what genetics can and cannot do when it comes to their risk of developing cancer. Hope that all helps!