NHS IVF

[paigeeemicj]

Hello everyone,

Our fertility doctor has just applied for NHS funding so me and my partner can start IVF. What has people's experience been with IVF on the NHS and what was your wait time from funding application to funding approval and from funding approval to starting IVF medication?

We have been told that IVF with ICSI is our only option as my partner has been diagnosed with OAT so if anyone has any experience with that specifically I'd love to hear it as well 🥺

Hi not actually done a cycle but have been referred for IVF ICSI due to partner low sperm count. We applied for funding and got approved 4 weeks after it was sent. The clinic called us directly to book us in for initial scan and bloods etc. just had a follow up consultation a few weeks after that and now they trying to see if we can be fit in before Christmas. It's not looking likely due to my cycle and they are closed for the Christmas break so I think I have to wait for the new year which is frustrating but waited this long !

I would say timings are very location dependent though so it's hard to get a gauge from others as I have seen anything from 2 weeks to months

Ah I see, we are under Cambridge IVF at Ipswich. Both me and my partner have had a lot of blood work done already. I was supposed to have a HyCosy done but our doctor told us due to my partners OAT to not have the HyCosy as there is risk of infection and that he was going to refer us for IVF without it anyway. I feel a little lost in the process, I've had to spend so much time fighting for tests to be run on us, I kept being told I was sooooo young (24) and that I have sooooo much time and it's taken 3 years to even get to the point where my GP would even refer us to the fertility clinic. It's great to have a diagnosis for him now and people have finally stopped talking about how I don't need treatment because I'm young but I'm just so confused about what happens now and the timeline for it

Definitely depends where you are in the country 🥰 we submitted our funding application October 2023 and had to wait until April for it to be approved, then we started our treatment in August 2024 with IVF ICSI

Ours was during the tail end of Covid so i think things were slower anyway but I don’t remember it being that bad either, maybe 2-3 months? Totally depends where you are. What I will say that is that for our clinic anyway, they wanted all our tests to be max 6 months old so if you don’t want to lose time you might want to have to redo tests so you can hit the ground running. From memory those tests were my thyroid levels (I have an under active thyroid), STDs and maybe my AMH?

Hello,

For us it took 3 months between applying for the funding and starting our IVF cycle with ICSI.

It took approximately 4 weeks for the funding to be approved. After that I had to go for a baseline scan at the IVF clinic, which had to be done at the beginning of my cycle, so it took a couple of weeks to schedule. Then once we had the scan we were able to book the appointment with the consultant, which took another couple of weeks, and then we had to sign all the papers. Once that was done we had to book the nursing appointment to explain to us how to administer the injections. After that they ordered my medicines, and I was able to start at my following cycle.

I honestly thought that things would move faster after the funding was approved, but there were still a lot of appointments to plan before starting treatment.

Hey there,

So m, I've started my IVF journey as an NHS funded patient and honestly, because you get referred to a private clinic anyway the clinic themselves have been incredible. So informative, kind, and caring. The NHS side wasn't great for me. After a year of messing me around and messing up my referral the process with the actual clinic was pretty quick. They're responsive and get stuff done quickly. It's only taken about 2 months for me to actually start my injections from initial consultation abd that's because I went on holiday and needed to have a period before I started my down regulation. I'm still on the down reg meds and will be starting stims very soon. Hoping for some good news in the coming days.

Hey! I’m in Leicester and got referred on October 2023, had our first appointment in gynae with the fertility nurse in May 2024 who I guess did the application for us, but there was zero discussion about any sort of application being necessary so I had no idea that was even a thing. Then we had our appointment with the fertility consultant in November 2024 who told us at that appointment that we’d been approved. And finally we should be starting our first cycle in the next fortnight. It’s insane in Leicester just how long you have to wait.