Fertility Referral

[greendot1]

Received our letter to book an appointment with 1 of 7 local NHS hospitals for our fertility appointment.

Our GP is absolutely useless and has no idea what the process even is. Can anyone advise what actually happens with this initial appointment? Is this a consultation/appointment with NHS who decide if funding is given and then referred to specific fertility clinic? Can we still pick the clinic or is it the hospitals choice?

Does it make any odds which hospital you pick or is it more on who has the least wait time for that first initial appointment?

Thanks!

I don't think many GPs know the process from what I've read.
The first appointment will be going through your history, have you already had initial tests? Bloods, scans, partners SA? If so they will look at them and decide what route to go down. For us personally, we were referred straight for IVF with no prior investigations done (I have PCOS and partner has low count & morphology) so we took their advice, we went with Create who are a private clinic that take on NHS patients, so take a look at some local clinics in your area. One bit of advice I would give is push for them initial investigations if there are issues picked up, your area may be different but we were only entitled to 1 round which didn't go well, since then we discovered my partner has a varicocele which may or may not have been the cause for our failed round but the consultant at our follow up appointment was really addiment we get that sorted before going for another round, which they told us that in the first place!

Sorry for the long response I just think it's important to look into things before jumping into IVF like we did!

Good luck x