Best drug prices on NHS?

[meadowlark3]

Hi all, I am lucky to have a funded cycle on the NHS but must pay for my drugs. The supplier they use charges over 600 quid for buserelin, gonal-F and ovitrelle. Is this about the average or is there somewhere that might be less expensive? (I know a full cycle would be loads more so don't mean to sound ungrateful!) Didnt realise I had to pay for the drugs so now may delay until I can set a bit of money aside. xx

I don't know, but I will say that the expensive one there is the gonal f. The others aren't especially pricey, so shop around mainly on that.

You may also want to have a conversation with the clinic about whether they envisage this being all the drugs you'll need, or whether you may need more as you go along. (Again, gonal f would be the culprit here.) They probably can't 100% answer that as it'll depend how you respond to stims, but they should be able to give you an idea of what they'd anticipate based on your AMH and so forth. At my clinic, you start off with the initial drugs you've ordered and buy more as needed - I'm such a crappy responder I was going through, like, 140 quid a day's worth of gonal f, for 10 days or so.

Thank you Persipan, I had no idea I might need to order additional doses...

You may not, if you're someone likely to respond well - but it's worth checking if that's what your clinic expect for you, out of there's a possibility you'll need more later.

Same with my clinic. They give you an initial supply of drugs and you order more as you go along.

On Monday I went for a scan and blood test and spent £90 on menopur. Another scan and blood test today and £180!

I'm on different drugs (donor egg) but I needed mine in a hurry so went to a local Tesco pharmacy rather than using the online supplier we had planned to. Tesco turned out to be significantly cheaper than online. I've also heard about Asda pharmacies being cheap for ivf medication.

So it might be worth phoning some supermarket pharmacies and getting prices

Zigzag, are you with the NHS? Daffodil, thanks, I will look into Asda and Tesco. BiggerBoat, which pharmacy do you mean in the hospital? Ours has a Lloyd's attached...is it that one, or a specialist pharmacy within the hospital?

Has anyone tried Alcura or other online services?

Thank you all xx

Meadowlark I am private but the clinic also has NHS patients. I get mine from the pharmacy at the hospital. Never even crossed my mind to get the drugs from anywhere else. It's convenient and they are always in stock which is good when you need them same day.

I paid £1600 for 4 injections. The pharmacist called the manager as she thought the till was wrong... Sadly not.

That was tesco, cheapest I could find