Cost of IVF treatment slashed for thousands of women in NSW

The cost of IVF treatment has been significantly reduced from today. The state government has not put a cap on how many rounds of IVF it will subsidise but with the lower cost, there are more chances of success if women don’t fall pregnant in the first round.

• Free IVF rounds proposed for NSW women
• Cancer patients to receive free IVF

The cost of conceiving a baby through IVF will be slashed for thousands of NSW women from today.

A round of IVF will cost a maximum of $1000 at the publicly supported clinics based at Westmead Hospital, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Randwick’s Royal Hospital for Women.

One round of IVF typically leaves women out of pocket by between $2000 and $6000, but the cost will now be significantly reduced.

The state government has not put a cap on how many rounds of IVF it will subsidise per patient, which doctors will instead determine based on the likely success of each consecutive attempt.

Each round of IVF includes egg collection and one fertilised embryo transferred into a woman’s uterus. Other embryos from the egg collection can be frozen and stored for later use, at an additional cost to the patient.

IVF treatments will now cost up to $1000 each round under a new lost-cost model. Picture: iStock

It comes six months after the city’s leading gynaecologists began thrashing out how to best spend $42 million promised by the Berejiklian government during the state election to make IVF more affordable.

Doctors had considered completely waiving the cost of IVF, but decided the low-cost model offered the greatest good for the greatest number.

The cut-price treatments will be offered to 6000 women in the next three-and-a-half years, and will not be subject to means testing or an income test in the same way patients aren’t turned away from public hospitals based on their bank balances.

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There is no explicit eligibility criteria for the discounted IVF but doctors are unlikely to treat women older than early 40s or with a body mass index above 36, in line with medical guidelines published by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

“This is an important move to ensure the availability of access to IVF irrespective of a couple’s circumstances,” RPA Hospital’s fertility department head Dr Mark Bowman said.

“The overarching philosophy is about helping people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to have IVF treatment in another system.”

While there is no eligibility criteria, doctors will still follow medical guidelines. Picture: iStock

One in every 22 Australian babies are now born through IVF, or about one child in every classroom. The new scheme makes NSW the only state in Australia to discount more than one round of IVF.

The discounted procedures will help more young infertile women enjoy motherhood sooner, without having to spend years saving up while their chances of conceiving decline.

It took 43-year-old mother-of-three Shona Cunningham 17 years to save enough money to pay for IVF, which cost her $5000 per round before she fell pregnant with her eight-year-old twins Sienna-Rose and Peter-James, nicknamed PJ.

Ms Cunningham had her first son, Jordan, through natural conception when she was 18 but subsequently become infertile and couldn’t afford to grow her family through IVF until she was 35.

It took Shona Cunningham 17 years to save money for IVF to conceive her now eight-year-old twins Peter-James and Sienna-Rose. Picture: Tim Hunter

“If I could have had the twins younger when I had more energy it would have been fantastic, but through our 20s my partner and I were trying to save for a house deposit and our wages weren’t fantastic,” Ms Cunnigham, from The Ponds in northwest Sydney, said.

“If IVF only cost me $1000 a round instead of $5000, my twins would have had more time with their grandparents.

“My twins have lost three grandparents in two years and two in the last two months.”

From today women fighting cancer will have their eggs, embryos and ovarian tissue frozen for free at Westmead Hospital, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Randwick’s Royal Hospital for Women, as revealed by The Sunday Telegraph last July.

Chemotherapy can reduce or destroy women’s fertility but freezing their eggs, embryos and ovarian tissue will give cancer sufferers their best possible chance of having children.

“Fertility treatment can be a long, expensive and emotionally difficult process so I hope that this extra support will give women more choices and ease the financial burden,” Health Minister Brad Hazzard said.

Originally published as Cost of IVF treatment slashed for thousands of women in NSW