Victoria’s best and worst IVF clinics and their success rates

Men and women desperate for a baby can now check the success rates and see the best and worst performing IVF clinics in Victoria. Search and see the full list.

Exclusive: Nearly four times as many women went home with a baby at Victoria’s top performing IVF clinics than those with lower success rates.

Analysis of the latest IVF success rates reported on the Federal Government’s Your IVF success website shows among women aged under 35 only one Victorian clinic - Ballarat IVF- made it into the top ten most successful clinics in the country and none made it into the top ten for women aged 35-42.

Within the state Ballarat IVF, several Monash IVF clinics, No.1 Fertility, Melbourne IVF, City Fertility and Genea were the top performers among women aged under 35.

Among older women several Monash IVF clinics, City Fertility, No.1 Fertility, Ballaratt IVF and the Royal Women’s Hospital were in the top ten statewide.

Last year News Corp revealed couples are paying over $15,000 for each IVF cycle and being left out of pocket by up to $5,688 and this means researching the best providers is a critical exercise.

Just as critical is knowing how your age can affect your chances of having a baby and a handy tool on the government run Yourivfsuccess website lets you explore this.

“The proportion of patients over 40 is getting bigger every year and it’s an uphill struggle. Those eggs have been there since before the woman was born, the idea that you can change their quality in the last few weeks before you collect them by giving medications of some sort is a struggle,” Professor Bill Ledger head of gynaecology and University of NSW said

The performance of IVF clinics is measured in four ways by independent University of NSW experts and couples can search the success rates of individual clinics on a government run website called Yourivfsuccess.com.au.

Using the data we produced an interactive table of IVF success rates based on measure 1 which tracked the number of live births that resulted from the eggs (fresh or frozen) collected from women in 2019 that were fertilised and implanted as embryos in 2019 and 2020.

Nationally at the best performing clinics more than one in three women aged 35-42 were successful at getting a live birth.

Kylie and Geoff Young, have a 4 week old baby boy named Bowie through IVF. Picture: Alan Barber

At the least successful clinics just one in 8 older women went home with a baby.

In Victoria Monash IVF Geelong had the highest success rate among older women with 34.6 per cent of women going home with a baby, the rate was 54.4 per cent for younger women but it treated only 181 patients.

Ballarat IVF had the highest success rate (57.6 per cent) among younger women. Among older women 24.3 per cent got a baby .but it treated only 207 women.

Monash IVF Clayton which treated 1021 women had a 50.6 per cent success rate among women aged under 35 and 24.9 per cent among women aged 35-42.

Melbourne IVF which treated 2,402 women had a 49.2 per cent success rate among younger women and a 29.3 per cent success rate among older women.

No.1 Fertility which treated 655 women also had a 24.9 per cent success rate among older women and a 49.7 per cent success rate among women aged under 35.

The Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne which provides free IVF had a success rate of 37.8 per cent among younger women and 21.5 per cent among older women.

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Budget provider Adora had a success rate of 38.8 per cent among younger women and 18.9 per cent among older women.

What’s really interesting is the huge variation in performance even within the same clinic groups.

At Monash IVF’s most successful clinic in Bondi in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, 58.1 per cent of women aged under 35 got a baby in 2020 compared to just 16.1 per cent at its Sale clinic in Victoria.

More than 68.3 per cent of younger women at Genea’s Orange clinic in NSW went home with a baby compared to 42.1 per cent per cent at its Melbourne clinic.

Adora’s Sydney clinic delivered a baby to 48.9 per cent of younger women but only 31.6 per cent got a baby at its Perth clinic.

At IVF Australia’s North shore clinic in Sydney 54.7 per cent of younger women got a baby bit at its Canberra clinic only 30.2 per cent did.

Mark Bowman, medical director, at Genea Fertility. Picture: Renee Nowytarger Photography

Genea’s medical director Mark Bowman said just a few more or a few less pregnancies at smaller clinics treating fewer than 300 women can easily skew their performance rating.

A clinic which had 90 per cent of its clients aged 29 would do better than one that had a high percentage of women aged 33 “because female age is so important in predicting success”, he said.

Nationally, Genea is the stand out performer with multiple clinics in the top 10 for both older and younger women but its Melbourne clinic ranked much lower.

Monash IVF and IVF Australia had several high performing clinics but smaller operators like Care Fertility in Brisbane, Fertility First in Sydney, Ballarat IVF and Repromed in Adelaide scored exceptionally well among younger women.

Among older women Genea’s Wollongong clinic and Monash IVF’s Auchenflower clinic in Brisbane were the top performers delivering babies to more than 38 per cent of women. However, both treated a small number of women.

Among clinics treating over 300 women Genea again led the field in treating women aged 35-42 and had four clinics in the top ten.

Among younger women aged under 35 up to three in four women went home with a baby and at the worst performing clinics only one in six women got a baby.

Care Fertility in Brisbane had an astounding 72.2 per cent success rate but it is worth noting it treated only 91 women.

Monash IVF’s chief scientific officer Associate Professor Deirdre Zander- Fox. Supplied

Among clinics treating over 300 women Fertility North in WA ranked first with a success rate of 60.8 per cent among younger women and Genea’s Sydney CBD clinic came second with a 60 per cent success rate among women aged under 35, it also had two other clinics in the top 10.

Performance among the other clinics in the top ten ranged between 49.7 per cent and 56.3 per cent for women aged under 35.

Genea’s medical director Mark Bowman said the company’s high success rate was due to all its equipment being in house and developed by its biotech arm.

“We’ve done lots of studies to show that gets you more embryos per egg collection, better quality embryos pre collection, which means you’ve got more opportunities to succeed,” he said.

Monash IVF’s chief scientific officer Associate Professor Deirdre Zander- Fox said the company was “rolling out the latest in incubators and using very high sensitivity equipment to monitor our temperature and gas concentrations and … we have had a significant improvement over the last four years of 5.3 per cent across the whole Monash IVF group,” she said.

IVF Australia manging director Teena Pisarev said “it’s pleasing to note that IVFAustralia’s large metropolitan clinics, where we have heavily invested in the latest IVF science, run well ahead of the Australian average.”