New Guidelines To Standardise Access Criteria For IVF Treatment

Main Category: Fertility
Article Date: 19 Jun 2009 - 6:00 PDT

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The National Infertility Awareness Campaign (NIAC) welcomed the document 'Standardising Access Criteria to NHS Fertility Treatment'1 produced by Infertility Network UK (I N UK) and funded by the Department of Health.

The NICE Guideline issued in 2004 recommended that eligible couples should receive three full cycles of IVF or ICSI NHS treatment, and defines a cycle as one which includes frozen embryo transfers (FET), but more than five years on there remains considerable disparity not only in the number of cycles being funded by the Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) but equally importantly in the access criteria applied by the PCTs in determining who can receive treatment.

Recent measures announced by the Government to encourage implementation of the Guideline have led to an improvement in the provision in some areas but more needs to be done by Primary Care Trusts in England to ensure that patients have equal and timely access to the full range of treatment recommended by NICE, and to tackle the ongoing variations in provision that exist across the country.

Clare Lewis-Jones, Chair of NIAC and Chief Executive of Infertility Network UK said "Although there has been an improvement recently in the provision of treatment by some PCTs, there still remains considerable variation in the criteria used to determine whether or not couples can access treatment. We welcome the recent measures announced by the Government to encourage implementation of the Guideline but particularly with the move towards single embryo transfer (SET) more needs to be done by the PCTs to fund three full cycles as recommended in the NICE Guideline and to standardise the access criteria they use to determine who can access NHS treatment and allow couples to have the treatment they need to help them have their family.

It is totally unacceptable that patients are denied treatment simply because of where they live or on the basis of their age, and we urge all PCTs to implement these new recommendations and make access to fertility services fair, consistent, cost effective and clinically effective across the country."

1 The document 'Standardising Access Criteria to NHS Fertility Treatment' produced by Infertility Network UK can be accessed via the Infertility Network UK Website http://www.infertilitynetworkuk.com

Source
Infertility Network UK