IVF costs in London

[Beingamom]

Hello, does anyone know what is a reasonable cost to pay a private clinic for IVF? Specifically CRGH, are the costs valid?

What do you mean, are they valid? Are you trying to say that they charge too much?

Yes, they seem to be charging almost 10K per cycle. Is it similar across other private clinics?

There are so many variables depending on your situation, so no one can tell you what it will cost

All the clinics openly publish their prices on their websites, so you can compare them easily

The one thing I would say though - don’t just look at pieces, look at success rates

We ignored several people advising us to go to ARGC because it seemed more expensive than others
In the end, we spent more at cheaper clinics which couldn’t get me pregnant, then moved to ARGC where it worked first time

So it can be a false economy to just base the decision on price

A quick google suggests it’s only £10k for donor eggs IVF, and £3.5k for non-donor IVF?

@PotteringAlong

A quick google suggests it’s only £10k for donor eggs IVF, and £3.5k for non-donor IVF?

It can easily escalate to £10k for a cycle with own eggs

If you need ICSI, long protocol drug quantities, a hysteroscopy, etc
Even more if you need to do immune blood testing and treatments

And some clinics love selling you Add-ons like embryo glue, assisted hatching etc

£3.5k covers the clinic costs but not the drugs, blood tests etc

Ah. The question then is how does that compare to other clinics?

It’s comparable in cost to the other decent London clinics, Lister etc, once you factor in the appointments, tests etc.

None of them are cheap, sadly, the costs are eye-watering pretty much anywhere.

As pp says, ARGC is more expensive but more intensive, so you get more detailed care for the money, but you’re in a lot more for tests.

If you’re worried about cost, have you looked into multi-cycle/refund packages? Or going abroad?

Our cycle was a bit more than 10k with them because there were some delays, extra scans and extra medications. It quickly adds up. It's comparable with most other clinics from what I remember in my research. There are some cheaper options but they also can be less medicalised versions of IVF so it depends what you want really.

Agree with PPs that £10k in London is typical.

£3.5k may pay for the core things like monitoring scans during the cycle, egg collection and transfer but add on consultations, drugs/medication, needles, sharps bins, extra scans when needed, extra blood tests when needed, embryo freezing…. You’re looking at £10k easily.

Have you done any preliminary tests on NHS? That could save a bit if within 6 months as otherwise you need to pay for HIV/Hep blood tests, FSH, AMH and so on and perhaps a semen culture, if using partners.

Thanks for your responses. I have already had my 3 cycles with NHS and none have worked. They have always told me all my and husband's medical parameters are perfect but reasons for not conceiving are unknown. Guy's ACU. Not very happy with the lack of doctor facetime at that clinic.
Now we r left with no option but a private clinic. We have been recommended batching i.e. 2 cycles of collection followed by a transfer.
The costs seem to be going up due to the add-ons. Even Covid testing at their clinic is expensive, which we may get done elsewhere.

As of now we are comfortable with our consultant doctor at CRGH, but just trying to assess if there r any other recommended clinics.

You do know that Guys have self-funded options too, as do many other major hospitals?

I have 2 rounds at guys. 1 NHS, 1 private. They had 2 tiers for private. 1 was self-funded, and the other called consultant led which was £1000 extra. From memory, the consultant led meant you have more flexibility on appointment times, after hours appointments if wanted, plus you saw the consultant at each visit.

Added costs are usually down to extra tests when you go to a different clinic, if you need ICSI and the cost of the meds. Here are guys private prices, but you can easily just google the costs at various clinics.

guysandstthomasprivatehealthcare.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ACU-Self-Funding-Price-List.pdf

ours was about £10k plus meds but that included PGS testing (at £3k) and ICSI (at nearly £2k) so basic IVF was about £5k plus meds

Thanks. We have checked the private option at Guy's as well and they will be doing nothing additional from previous cycles I'm afraid, so we decided not to proceed with them.

We paid £12k for icsi in Manchester. It was for 3 cycles but if the first one worked (which it did) then you couldn't use the remaining 2 cycles. I think just one cycle was £8k if I remember rightly

The medication costs are often such an unknown quantity and I think overall a cycle cost at most London clinics is comparable, with outliers such as ABC at the cheap end but with eligibility criteria and ARGC being more expensive but with extensive monitoring. Congratulations @Sparechange

You could try asking on the Infertility boards too, there will be other people using CRGH or who have done previously.

I had NHS funded IVF and they proudly said they would do nothing differently if we were self-funded. So that was ruled out immediately because our clinic was really bad. Not saying that Guys is by the way.

Yes we have been advised the same, but mostly IMSI instead of ICSI and PGS, which Guys says is not recommended

I would really recommend at least speaking to ARGC

If you’ve not been given a reason for the failed cycles, they are the only ones likely to get to root cause rather than just trot out the ‘it’s a numbers game’ line and get you to do endless cycles until something sticks

I had earlier cycles at Lister, Create, Chelsea and Westminster and they were all of the option that we should just keep going and eventually it would work. I had 11 cycles across those clinics with no baby…

One consultation at ARGC, and the doc looked at my history and medical notes, and said I almost certainly had an immune condition which was preventing implantation because my body was seeing the embryo as a foreign body and destroying it

They did the relevant blood tests, and of the 7 immune things they measure, I was off the scale on 5 of them

I had 1 course of medication to suppress my immune system, then a retest showed all the blood levels were normal so we did another cycle
It worked first time, and gave us enough leftover embryos to give us our second son

The ARGC round was north of £15k but that was nothing compared to the cost of the 11 failed cycles at the other clinics

Even after the last failed round, Lister was still trying to talk me out of going to ARGC and said they could get me pregnant if I just had the patience to stick with them

@Sparechange I'm sorry for all the failed cycles and congratulations on your success! I'm very hopeful after hearing your story.
I have been told that a fibroid which is currently not in the cavity might just stop implantation, but it's not confirmed yet coz it's outside the cavity.
CRGH will recommend me to a specialist to rule out that option.
I will reach out to ARGC as well and find out what consultation they can offer me.

@ivfbabymomma1 did you have a provider like Access Fertility provide these packages?

ARGC can be eye watering - I know people who have spent £20k+ on a single round there

Create is £13.5k for a 3 cycle package of natural modified IVF with ICSI and all drugs- since you've already has a few failed rounds on the NHS have you explored something different like natural modified?

@twinningatlife I've not come across natural modified cycle. Can you please brief me on what is it about?
I have now booked an intial consultation with ARGC as well.

With CRGH my estimated costs are between 25-30K since they have recommended batching i.e. 2 cycles of egg retrieval (approx. 9k each) to get more eggs at the same time and apparently it helps with spare embryos after PGS.

Natural modified is just lower dose stims

Nothing particular complicated or revolutionary about it, they just believe that you get better egg quality if you don’t massively overstimulate ovaries

But I will reiterate, it’s pointless getting into the ins and outs of each clinics techniques for stims without doing some sort of investigation into why your rounds aren’t working

Assuming you’re managing to get enough eggs and making good quality embryos, there will be a bigger reason why they aren’t implanting

Create is good at a lot of things (I had 5 or 6 rounds there, across both of their sites) but they are hopeless at investigating ‘unexplained’ implementation failure
They had one doctor who was better than the others but he left a few years ago to set up his own clinic and I don’t think any of the newer doctors have any sort of interest in repeated implantation failure

It’s a great clinic for low AMH patients, and for straightforward male factor patients but they quickly get out of their depth with more complicated cases

@Beingamom yes it was access fertility!!!

Costs do vary a lot - it's worth shopping round. Our cycle at Kings Fertility was £5600 in total, including meds (no ICSI and no freezing costs as we only had one to transfer). My meds costs were pretty high. I think they are quite competitive price was and we had a really good experience with them.