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PAYING top dollar is no guarantee of success in IVF, with some of Australia’s highest-charging clinics having lower success rates than cheaper competitors.
A News Corp investigation that cross-checked the success rates of clinics against the fees they charge has found recent price rises have pushed the total cost of IVF – including initial specialist appointments, day surgery fees, and tests and medicines – past $15,000 per cycle.
Some providers – such as Queensland Fertility Group and City Fertility – appear to be lower-priced because they do not include specialist procedural fees for egg collection and embryo transfer in the costs quoted on their websites that can amount to between $1000 and $2000 extra.
To help couples desperate for a baby, we ranked clinics by price and then checked this against their performance on the government’s Your IVF Success website, using the births per completed egg retrieval cycle as the metric.
This tracks the number of live births that resulted from the eggs – fresh or frozen – collected from women in 2018 that were fertilised and implanted as embryos that year and in 2019.
The website will be updated early next year with the latest success statistics.
The cheapest IVF clinics – quoting out-of-pocket costs of $0 for an IVF cycle – were the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, Connect IVF in Sydney, and The Fertility Centre and Life Fertility in Brisbane. Budget provider Adora, which charges $450$825 depending on which state you live in, was the third-cheapest.
Fertility First in Hurstville, Sydney (charging $3883 per IVF cycle), Fertility Specialists of Western Australia, in Applecross ($3380) and Pivet in WA ($3678) emerged as the nation’s best-value providers.
Fertility First ranked sixthmost successful in giving older women a child and 14th most-successful among women aged under 35. It was also one of the most affordable providers. In NSW, Westmead Fertility Clinic, which charges just $1000 for an IVF cycle, was the 14th most-successful at getting older women a baby.
Our investigation found Monash IVF was the most expensive provider, charging up to $5688 per IVF cycle – and some of its clinics were very successful.
Among women aged 3542, Monash IVF’s Rockhampton clinic was the most successful in the country at delivering a baby, and its
Townsville clinic was the 13th most-successful. However, the Rockhampton success rate was based on treating only 63 women.
Monash’s Auchenflower and Southport clinics, in Queensland, charged the same amount but did not perform as well. The Southport clinic ranked below the national range among women aged under 35.
Monash IVF’s chief operating officer, Dr Hamish Hamilton, said that in the past three years the company’s success rates had increased by 4.4 per cent.
“To deliver on those sorts of pregnancy rates, you need the best scientists and doctors, fantastic equipment, you need the world’s best timelapse incubators, such as an embryoscope that enables us to grow embryos with minimal intervention, and the world’s greatest technology for genetics and sperm selection,” Dr Hamilton said.
City Fertility was the second-most expensive provider, charging about $5645 per cycle on average but only two of its seven clinics – Bundora in Melbourne (ranked 15th) and Brisbane (ranked 22nd) – had notable success rates among older women. Its Gold Coast clinic fell below the national range for younger women.
Genea was the third-most expensive provider with charges of $5590. Four of its clinics ranked in the top 10 for delivering babies to older women.
“The important thing to consider regarding pricing is
Genea’s investment in research and development, which has resulted in the exclusive use of superior technology and success rates above the national average,” operations manager Kathleen Waite said.
IVF Australia had the fourth-highest fees at $5483 but the facilities at Sydney’s North Shore, Western Suburbs and Parramatta clinics performed below the national range in delivering babies to women under 35.
The North Shore clinic also fell below the national range for treating women aged 35-42.
“The success rates cited date back to 2018 and do not reflect current success rates,” a Virtus Health spokesman said.
The Queensland Fertility Group charges $4149 – these fees do not include egg collection and transfer fees that can add $1500- $2000 to costs – and its Townsville clinic was ranked the 10thmost successful at delivering a baby to older women.
However, its Gold Coast and Brisbane clinics ranked below the national range at producing babies for younger mums.
Adora, which was the first to offer bulk-billed IVF, raised its fees in September and now charges out-of-pocket
expenses of between $450 and $825 a cycle depending on which state you live in.
Among older women aged 35-42, Adora clinics in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney performed within range among younger women but it its Sydney and Brisbane clinics did not do as well for women aged 35-42. Perth has not published its success rate.
Adora’s national medical director, Dr Paul Atkinson, said cost was one of the most significant barriers to couples accessing IVF and by bulkbilling the majority of Medicare-eligible expenses, the company was able to keep down the out-of-pocket costs of an IVF cycle.