More women than ever before are undergoing IVF, but NHS financial support is dwindling.
For 63% of those accessing fertility treatments, they’re having to fund it themselves, with an eye-watering average spend of £13,750. And it’s these hefty amounts, coupled with the astronomical cost-of-living, that has left half of patients unable to move forward with the process.
As Alex Holder, the author of Open Up: Why Talking About Money Will Change Your Life and a private IVF patient, puts it: ‘The fact is that people undergoing IVF treatment are more likely to have spent over £15,000 to have a miscarriage than a successful pregnancy.’
But what if there was a way to ensure you’re only paying for a successful round of IVF? What if you could get an IVF refund?
Rosie Comb-Clark and her husband Paul had met through work two years before they started trying for a baby. And after 6 months, they decided to try and conceive using IVF.
‘We didn’t qualify to have the procedure on the NHS because my husband had only just registered with the doctors in our local Primary Care Trust,’ Rosie tells Metro. ‘We didn’t want to wait for that full year for him to have been registered locally to be eligible. We were both getting a bit older, so we went straight to funding it ourselves privately.’
And at 38, her odds of a successful round were 19%.
But, while sitting in the reception of her chosen HFEA-registered clinic, Bourn Hall, in 2019, she was handed a leaflet that explained how they would eligible for a 50% refund if their three IVF rounds failed.
Access Fertility is an organisation that offers up to 100% refunds for eligible women below 38, or partial refunds for those aged 38 to 40, who have an unsuccessful round or package of IVF.
Rosie says: ‘For us it was a bit of a no-brainer to do it that way. I had no idea before then that such a thing existed.’
The couple promptly signed up for the refund package at a fixed upfront price of £11,950. This included everything but the drugs and extras, like embryo glue, which cost roughly £2,000 per round.
Knowing they were going to get their money back didn’t make it any easier for them when they had their first negative pregnancy test after the first round though.
‘The first one was certainly the hardest to get my head around, especially because no one knew we were having IVF. I had no support, other than my husband,’ Rosie explains.
‘In my experience, I had only really heared about people who had had successful rounds of IVF, so I think we went into it a little naively, thinking it was this silver bullet.’
They tried to instead focus on the fact they had two more rounds available, and a frozen embryo transfer. But sadly none of these were successful either.
‘We got through all of that and, no baby. We really took a moment to say, “right, what do we want to do? Do we want to try again, or do we just want to call it a day?”,’ Rosie says.
It was only when their 50% refund of £5,975 hit their account within just days of the phone call to Access Fertility that they decided to reinvest in another two-round IVF multi-cycle package for £8,300.
This meant the additional two rounds cost them £2,325. By this time, though, Rosie had hit 40, and she was no longer eligible for further refunds.
The impact of Access Fertility should not be underestimated though. The multi-cycle programme offered by the company was still cheaper than what Rosie and Paul would’ve paid to a clinic directly. And over the past decade it has refunded more than £16,000,000 to women who have sadly been unsuccessful with their IVF journeys.
How to get your IVF refund
- Prior to beginning your IVF journey you can call the Access Fertility patient adviser team and they can advise what programmes are available to you.
- If you’re below the age of 40 you’re eligible for a refund, dependent on your medical review. This has a 90% acceptance rate.
- The adviser will then inform you which fertility clinics offer the programme you want and you can go to that clinic and book your fertility treatment.
- Access Fertility will then send you an agreement and once you’ve made payment, your private IVF treatment can start straight away with any of the partnered private fertility clinics. The enrolment process is all digital meaning you don’t need to print, post or scan any documents.
- If you are sadly unsuccessful, you can call Access Fertility and the money will be refunded to you promptly.
While big banks like HSBC have told Metro they wouldn’t offer different eligibility criteria based on Access Fertility’s refund policies, the refunds could certainly help make paying back loans easier if a couple had secured funding for IVF from a bank.
Sadly, Rosie and Paul’s fourth cycle of IVF was unsuccessful, but they had produced an additional embryo in that cycle, so they had it transferred into Rosie’s uterus and she fell pregnant.
Devastatingly, Rosie lost her baby, miscarrying at seven weeks. She then underwent what she and her husband agreed would be their fifth and final round of IVF. This resulted in several good quality embryos, one of which they used for a frozen embryo transfer.
It was this FET that resulted in pregnancy, and Rosie gave birth to their gorgeous baby girl Esther, who is now four months old.
‘We were very excited, but cautiously so. I don’t think I let Paul buy any of the car seats or anything like that till about two months before she was due,’ Rosie explains.
‘I actually didn’t want to do that final round that we’d already paid for; I was done. It had been so tough – physically, mentally and emotionally. I think it was topped off with the miscarriage.
‘But we thought “we’ll do it one more time”. And thank God we did.’
For Rosie, that refund she’d received was the difference between them being able to afford to keep going, and being forced to stop treatment.
‘Could we have gone again without that refund? Potentially, but it would have been a slightly different conversation,’ Rosie explains.
‘It’s a lot of money, but without a doubt getting the refund from Access Fertility was really helpful. The only regret is we didn’t start it a bit younger when I could have got a 100% refund.’
Esther has made Paul and Rosie’s family complete. ‘She’s a real little pumpkin. She’s only three months old, but she’s definitely the boss,’ Rosie jokes.
‘She’s such a happy, content baby – and she smiles all the time. We’re so lucky and fortunate to have had her.’
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