Daily Mail

Desperate couples get fleeced by NHS for IVF

Hospitals charge 40% over odds

- By Sophie Borland and Rosie Taylor

‘Pushing us to raise fees’

NHS hospitals are charging desperate couples up to 40 per cent over the odds for private IVF treatment, an investigat­ion reveals today.

Many would-be parents are opting to pay in order to cut lengthy queues.

But fees are often much higher than the cost of providing the fertility service, raising suspicions that patients are being exploited with rip-off charges.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals asks £3,390 for one course – or cycle – of IVF, while the cost to the NHS is £2,416. At Chelsea and Westminste­r Hospitals in Central London, private couples pay £3,475 per cycle, a third higher than the £2,950 footed by the NHS.

And University Hospitals Coventry and Warwick charges couples £2,650 if they self-pay, whereas the cost to the NHS is £1,972.

One IVF consultant said he was constantly under pressure from managers to raise fees – and told the ‘ whole point’ was to bring in extra cash. The findings come after a probe we carried out earlier this month that exposed the practises of fertility clinics in the private sector.

Around one in seven couples in the UK suffer from problems conceiving and infertilit­y is rising as more leave it later to start a family.

But the NHS is steadily cutting back on its funding for IVF under budget constraint­s. The majority of health trusts only pay for one cycle – despite guidelines saying women should have three. They also have strict eligibilit­y criteria and couples will be refused if they are over 42, obese or smokers or have a child from a previous relationsh­ip.

Others choose to self-fund if the single IVF cycle they had on the NHS failed or because they want to avoid lengthy waiting lists.

The Mail sent Freedom of Informatio­n requests to 155 NHS hospitals. Of the 26 who run fertility centres and allow patients to self-fund, a total of nine confirmed that the charges for private care was higher than the locallyarr­anged NHS price.

They include Central Manchester University Hospitals where couples can pay £5,856 for an IVF cycle while the cost to the NHS is £4,324. Royal Devon and Exeter charges all patients £3,235 a cycle. But those going private have to pay an extra £1,000 for drugs.

The figures also reveal there is a huge variation between the private costs of IVF at different hospitals.

Dr John Parsons, director of an IVF clinic at King’s College Hospitals in London until 2010, said he was constantly told by managers to raise prices.

He said: ‘It’s terribly unfair. The whole point of having a clinic in the NHS grounds is to make money from it.

‘I was always furious. We initially made a point of only charging people what it costs in the NHS but the managers were always pushing us to raise it.’ Susan Seenan, of the Fertility Network charity, urged the NHS to provide more IVF so couples didn’t have to pay themselves.

On top of fees, patients also have to pay extras for appointmen­ts with a consultant as well as scans, which can be up to £200. Some trusts managed to get a discount if they bought treatment cycles in bulk from local health trusts, or Clinical Commission­ing Groups. Shadow Health Secretary John Ashworth said the ‘best possible NHS service should be available to everyone’. Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem’s health spokesman, said: ‘All too often, people awaiting IVF treatment face devastatin­gly long waits, causing untold anxiety.

‘ NHS doctors, who are already under serious time and resource pressures, having to split their time between NHS and private patients will only make this situation worse.’ Several hospitals said the costs were higher because of ‘admin fees’.

A spokesman for Central Manchester University Hospitals said fees were ‘in line with the rest of the sector’.

The Mail’s investigat­ion into the private sector found that doctors were encouragin­g couples to take out hefty loans for treatment.

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