Buying IVF medication privately

[Bd24]

Hi all,

I was hoping for a bit of advice from anyone who has purchased their own IVF medication recently. We are about to undergo our second round of IVF and, as we are using Access Fertility this time, wanted to look into whether buying meds ourselves (rather than from the clinic) might work out cheaper.

So my questions are…

- Where did you buy your meds from/get quotes from?

- Did it work out much cheaper?

- How was the process of getting quotes/buying - did you have to get a prescription from your clinic first or is just a list fine?

Thanks all! 🙂

[Football61]

Hi. I did quite a bit of research on this, and concluded that Asda Pharmacy was definitely the cheapest. They only charge cost-price. They gave me quotes over the phone, but I needed to take a hard copy of my prescription into the pharmacy before they would place the order. I was really pleased with them. Good luck x

[MrsOrangejuice]

Asda was miles cheaper than the clinic's provider. I sent a list of what I needed and they gave me a quote, then needed an electronic copy of the prescription to order it and they asked for the hard copy at some point (possibly just for pick up, can't remember). The clinic charged £60 to issue the prescription. The pharmacist was brilliant and so helpful. You may need to check timing and stock levels so you ensure you get them on time, and sometimes they had differnet sizes or quantities of meds to what was prescribed in individual units (so had to measure them out, or reuse a larger vial for several doses with different needles etc - but actually that made the overall cost even cheaper) but very straightforward.

[Darcy1996]

If you have time, Emma Haslam (Your IVF abroad) offers a quote service where overseas pharmacy get them sent to you next day, and often a big saving

[Dimo2024]

Hi.

Not bought my own ivf meds for stims but I wanted to stop utrogestan pessaries and move to injection method.

The clinic wrote the prescription and I could pick it up from any chemist that had it in stock. Mind you the Asda didn't have the needles in stock.

You could ask for the prescription in advance and shop around and compare the price with the clinic your with x

[Endofitall]

Someone else posted similar couple of days ago, I replied on there, hope it helps : healthunlocked.com/fertilit...

[StarsAllAround]

Asda Pharmacy is the cheapest as they do not add profit onto there medication they just charge you what they pay for them. Just be aware that it can sometimes take them a few days to get in the medication so make sure you take your prescription to them a good while before you need the medication. Also they do not dispense needles so if you are taking something like luibon you will need to get your needles elsewhere. I always just said to receptionist at my clinic that they hadn't sent me enough needles and she would give me a paper bag full of them as they keep a stock pile for emergencies. I expect most clinics do this. You can also ring them before hand and check if they have what you need in stock.

[Bd24]

Thank all for your responses! I have done a bit of research with the different companies mentioned and found most are really similar in price to my clinic, apart from ASDA. The quote from them was about £300 cheaper (but annoyingly two of the meds are out of stock).

My plan is to check back in with ASDA over the next couple of weeks and if they’re not back in stock, I’ll go with my clinic.

Fostimon is the one that is proving very expensive this round.