IVF medication - buying privately

[PsychologyGeek]

Hi all,

I was hoping for a bit of advice from anyone who has purchased their own IVF medication recently. We are about to undergo our second round of IVF and, as we are using Access Fertility this time, wanted to look into whether buying meds ourselves (rather than from the clinic) might work out cheaper.

So my questions are…

• Where did you buy your meds from/get quotes from?
• Did it work out much cheaper?
• How was the process of getting quotes/buying - did you have to get a prescription from your clinic first or is just a list fine?

Thanks all! 🙂

We costed up with ‘zen’ pharmacy and Asda (Asda do not for profit on fertility meds) but all in it seemed so close in price it wasn’t worth the extra hassle of obtaining the prescription from the clinic. Our clinic sent the prescriptions direct to ‘Fertility2U’ and it was so efficient tbh.

I have literally just used stork (via mediserve ) was nearly 1k cheeper, emailed the prescription, delivered on a date that you choose

Our clinic used stork. I enquired with other pharmacies to compare costs if we sourced it privately but there really wasn't much in it so we went with stork each time for convenience.

If you get a price estimate from your fetility clinic, it should include recommended medication and amounts. Then just call Asda for a quote.

These were the price comparisons I got about 6m ago:

• Gonal F 300iu - £130 with Stork vs £113 at Asda
• Cetrotide 0.25mg - £38 with Stork vs £28 with Asda
• Ovitrelle 250mcg - £45 with Stork vs £38 with Asda.

I initially calculated it saving me £160/round, but turns out my clinic - Create - were very “economical” with their quoted medication list. It didn’t remotely represent the actual quantities required (and therefore cost). Add in a couple of abandoned cycles, and I’ve saved over £500 over 3 rounds by going with Asda over Stork.

There must be regional differences in pricing because Asda cost more for some of those same meds when I checked! Probably changes from month to month too. No harm doing the research it you can be bothered OP.

@CultOfTheAirFryer that's great, my Asda was a nightmare saying they can't get the needles they needed me to go in with the physical prescription (it was emailed ) they wouldn't quote over the phone, or email. Sad thing is imo these meds should be a set price luckily (I think ) mine were 1k for all ... Now panicking that I should have tried a different Asda 😞

Thank all for your responses! I have done a bit of research with the different companies mentioned and found most are really similar in price to my clinic, apart from ASDA. The quote from them was about £300 cheaper (but annoyingly two of the meds are out of stock).

My plan is to check back in with ASDA over the next couple of weeks and if they’re not back in stock, I’ll go with my clinic.

Fostimon is the one that is proving very expensive this round.

I have just ordered some meds randomly from India £250 for meds that would have cost 1.5k here, ordered last week arrived today.
The process was easy all ordered via WhatsApp after making contact through a web form, paid via Monzo and they arrived via royal mail 7 days later

For people wanting to buy themselves, I have ordered from India, yes it took about two weeks to arrive but it was around 1/5th of the price in the UK, arrived well packaged and communication is fantastic. Company is
Beyond Care, Nagpur https://www.beyondmedex.com

I used Asda they were the cheapest compared to stork, pharmaceiage, TFP etc. it was about £600-800 difference. Some even charged private prescription fees plus cold storage transport costs. Asda ordered everything I needed over the phone and then I dropped in the prescription and picked up the meds. Most of the online pharmacies required the prescription direct from the clinic plus a physical copy in the post too.