A fertility clinic in Manchester has launched a new scheme that will give a refund to patients who fail to have a baby after undertaking IVF treatment.
Manchester Fertility has partnered with Access Fertility, a company specialising in IVF payment planning, to offer the scheme. In order to qualify, patients must be 37 and under and use their own eggs. The scheme entitles patients to have up to 70 percent of their fees refunded if the treatment does not result in a live birth.
One cycle of IVF treatment costs around £3,000 to those unable to access NHS funding, with extra costs for additional services and the necessary drugs. However, despite the significant cost, the chances of conceiving after the first cycle of IVF is around 30 percent, depending on the age of the patient.
A 'shared risk' IVF treatment plan of the type that Manchester Fertility is offering will help reduce the financial strain and risk of non-conception placed on patients who elect for privately funded IVF.
Similar shared risk IVF treatment plans are already in place in the USA, but Manchester Fertility is the first clinic in the UK to launch such a package. Another such scheme will be rolled out at a clinic in Brighton, with schemes in London to follow.
Many UK patients choose to travel abroad to participate in a shared risk scheme. Access Fertility CEO Ash Carroll-Miller said in the last five years, 90 percent of the 600 UK patients who travelled to the USA's largest fertility clinic for treatment had enrolled under a refund deal.
Mr Carroll-Miller commented that 'We don't feel patients in the UK should have to leave the country to access this kind of offer and we're excited to be bringing our unique programme to them'.
Access Fertility and Manchester Fertility have made efforts to separate the financial and medical elements of the treatment. Access Fertility decides whether patients are able to take part in the scheme and is responsible for refunding fees, while Manchester Fertility receives payment from Access only for the treatment itself.
Manchester Fertility continues to conduct all medical assessments and treatments. It stressed that its treatment recommendations will remain the same whether or not a patient participates in the money-back scheme, and that it receives no fee or commission for referring patients to the scheme.
Related Articles
Concerns over 'no baby, no fee' programmes
Campaigners have requested increased oversight over 'no baby, no fee' funding programmes offered by IVF clinics...
The good, the bad and the ugly: compassion and corruption in the commercial baby business
Are business and medicine hopelessly intertwined in fertility care, at (quite literally) the expense of the patient?...
Some NHS commissioners paying twice as much for IVF
Research conducted by the campaign group Fertility Fairness has uncovered significant variations in the amount that NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups are paying for one cycle of IVF treatment....
Mid Essex: Only HIV and cancer patients could be eligible for IVF
Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group has proposed to limit access to IVF to cancer patients and HIV-positive men under its options for reform to the funding of its fertility services....
Fertility app offers to fund treatment for women who can't conceive
A fertility app has been launched that will help pay for treatment for women who are unable to conceive after ten months of using the program...
IVF funding cuts spark access concerns
The number of publicly funded IVF cycles dropped by nearly 14 percent this financial year in the UK, an investigation by the GP magazine Pulse has revealed...
UK couple 'too old' for publicly-funded IVF to sue the Health Secretary
A couple who was refused fertility treatment on the NHS for being 'too old' has said it intends to challenge the decision in the courts, arguing that the decision amounts to age discrimination....
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.