NHS fertility funding for IVF

[Witneys]

Hi,

My wife and I have recently been successful in retrieving funding for two rounds of IVF and are nearly starting treatment now.

I just thought I'd post on here in case anyone was considering starting the NHS funding process as it's quite new for lesbian couples (unsure as to whether it's nationwide or not, we're in Surrey) and it was a very unclear and lengthy process, took us over a year and lots of different hospital visits in order to satisfy the funding requirements.

If anyone sees this and wants to ask any questions about our experience please feel free.

Hi There!

How nice of you to post this. My wife and I may well need this as my private treatment is getting too expensive..... Where did you start? !

Hiya,

Of course - happy to help. There's not clear info online but we realised via a friend and a couple of articles early last year that 3 UK counties were apparently the first to start funding IVF for lesbian couples, including Surrey. The first step was then a GP appointment to confirm this.

The doctor was keen to help us but hesitant about confirming any availability of funding - we understand now that it's because of the unclear process, which can change and you can't really expect a GP to understand it all in detail, plus my wife had to undergo various 'tests' to check her fertility and eligibility for funding.

Ineligible immediately if either of us already had a child, or if we were over 40 (this age varies based on location I think, 40-42). There may also be something about not being eligible if you've already had private IVF treatment, but I'm not sure, I'd encourage you to ask your GP.

Our process in detail:

1. GP appointment to start the process for my wife to have initial ovary tests. She had an ovary and womb scan at the local hospital, and a blood test during 3 ovulation cycles to check egg production. She had to have a follow up scan after one of the scans too for them to check something. In the end, these tests meant the GP could then refer us to Croydon Hospital Fertility for some further tests to secure the funding for treatment. All took about 5-6 months.
2. At Croydon, over the period of about 6 months, my wife had to have 10+ blood tests plus more womb scans and a fallopian tube inspection, all to confirm her general health, ovary health and fertility. Essentially these are the same checks that a hetero female would go through if they were struggling to conceive - results of the tests then being used by the doctor to give recommendations about any changes she can make to improve her chances of conceiving naturally. I also had to do a STD blood test too - as the partner - which was random.
3. The results for all of these are basically so the fertility nurse can submit the NHS funding request, which involves a huge checklist to say all of these things have been checked. It turned out my wife has a low egg count so we were therefore illegible for IVF. They said we could request IUI or IVF but it's likely if we got funding for IUI and it was unsuccessful then we wouldn't subsequently get funding for IVF. They weren't really sure about this, but we wanted to give ourselves the best chance so went for IVF.
4. It took a couple of weeks for the funding request to be approved, and my wife had to do one more blood test (for hepatitus b) which had been forgotten.

We finally got our referral to the private fertility clinic a couple of months ago. In our first meeting with a consultant there he emphasised we'd done well and implied he hadn't seen many of these cases before i.e. we were lucky to get the funding. I guess because it only became available last year so we may be one of the first.

All in all - a lengthy and uncertain process, but we're extremely grateful to be eligible. No doubt that it's due to the Megan and Whitney Bacon-Evans case last year.