Private or NHS for initial consultation

[Elsie82]

Hi everyone, I messaged last week about being at the referral stage with my GP. We were waiting on my partners results, which we have now received and the referral has now gone through at last. I'm now feeling anxious about the waiting times for the next appointments, and wondered if you have any advice about possibly going private for the consultations/ further testing? I'm not sure if this would push things through any quicker during these times when all clinics are understandably busy? Any advice would be great. Thank you xx

[Mycatsaremykids]

I’m not sure about waiting list for private v NHS in these strange times but there are a couple of things from my experience which may or may not be useful to you.

Firstly if you or your partner have any health insurance it may cover tests. We had almost ruled out the health insurance we get through work as it didn’t cover treatment for fertility but it turned out it did cover fertility “investigations”.

Secondly we found that a couple of the consultants that worked in our NHS clinic also did appointments at the private hospital next door which has meant that we have been able to have a combination of NHS treatment and private appointments fairly seamlessly. This helped to keep costs down and meant when I needed a hysteroscopy the consultant could give us a fair view of the waiting times on the NHS verses no wait for having this done privately.

Best of luck with everything xxx

[Elsie82 in reply to Mycatsaremykids]

Thank you, we don't have any Health Insurance unfortunately, but I am going to make some enquiries about private today. The thing I worry about is if we have the tests/ consultation done privately, would we then be able to go for NHS treatment? But from your response, this looks possible xx

[stephkp]

You would need to check with the CCG for your area. Some will let you have private treatment/tests without it affecting eligibility for nhs treatment. Some say any private treatment excludes you from having treatment on the nhs. I would look into the nhs criteria/exclusions for your area before you decide on anything x

[Elsie82 in reply to stephkp]

Great advice thank you x

[Ivfgotadream]

The problem is that you will be starting from scratch with a private clinic with zero medical history documented and they will want to run lots of tests which won’t be cheap? Many of them the NHS don’t do as part of their referral - the standard ones for the NHS are his n hers blood tests for basic things, an ultrasound of your uterus and a HSG. HSG are impossible to get done privately as they require an x ray machine and Are super expensive! Most of them also have an “expiry” date to them so you could find yourself paying for them privately intending to pass the info to the NHS only to be told they will need redoing?

Private clinics will usually accept NHS test results but NHS aren’t always as receptive due to the amount of red tape/politics

If you are fully intending on going down the NHS route then don’t get the tests done privately. If you think you can’t deal with the waiting time (which is long at the moment on the NHS) and so going to go private anyway then do. But as others have said If you are say entitled to 2 NHS cycles and have 1 private first then your NHS one is reduced accordingly

[FrancyItaly]

I had all tests done with Nhs but in the end we decided to go to a private clinic. They accepted some blood results that we had with the gp and we saved around £150, however most tests have to be done in your cycle, they need to monitor that to have a starting point, so you end up doing the tests again with the clinic. My advice is, if you don’t want to wait and you need flexibility go private. In my clinic they do blood tests at 7:30am so I don’t have to leave work, but I do have to take time off work for scans. I wish you all the best on this journey x