Hi
Is there anyone here dealing with NHS posthumous cryopreservation after cancer care? Does anybody have any information about what funding changes were made last year whereby those widowed with cryopreservation under cancer care are now to be charged for the cryopreservation at the point that their partner dies (if this happens)? This is what I have been informed of by the reproductive team this month.
My partner died of cancer and due to the signed legal consent forms (and mine, too), it has meant that cryopreservation has been continuing, as the formal information that I have makes clear. However, this has apparently changed last year but I have not been formally informed of this.
I was turned down for NHS IVF before last year and the reason for this was because my partner had died. They said this meant that I was requesting it as an individual and therefore I was considered as medically ‘single’ with no medical grounds for requiring fertility healthcare. Obviously, that flies in the face of all common sense. I’d like to challenge that but I don’t have the time now because I am being told I am going to be charged by the NHS instead.
The changes that I was told of are apparently national in that it applies to everyone in my position and it’s due to come into place soon. This has has meant me moving it somewhere else where I’ll pay for it there, instead. Obviously it’s not ok that this has happened so I won’t be paying the hospital’s private provider bank account. I’d rather pay a separate private provider. So obviously it’s not ok that I’m having to do that because of what has happened but there’s not really any other choice.
I can’t find anything online about exactly what these changes are? I was told to ask the CCG for it but I feel like I’m about to be forced to pay the NHS at ‘any moment’ so my priority is not writing to a CCG if I’ve been formally informed by the NHS Manager of the reproductive team.
I’ve looked online and the CCG criteria in another area makes it clear what the funding arrangements are in cancer care fertility preservation and that this continues afterwards, even if the patient dies, so long as there are the consent forms for it. That hasn’t changed in their funding criteria so I don’t know what ‘national change’ is taking place for people in my position because I can’t see it and nobody has written to me with any information before it ‘comes into place’ and goes ‘live’.
Does anyone know? I will contact the CCG once I’ve sorted the other paperwork out first but I’d rather have some kind of proper information before doing so because they’re quite difficult at the best of times! So I’d like to know what legal and/NHS change two staff are telling me of when they haven’t evidenced it to me with any actual formal document. Does anyone know?
Thanks,
RLM
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