New not-for-profit fertility clinic in UK

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), long known as the UK’s leading abortion care service, will be launching a national not-for-profit fertility service in 2021 to provide ethical, evidence based, person-centred reproductive healthcare. It intends to only charge what it costs to provide a safe, high quality, and accessible service to patients who may be unable to access NHS funded care.

BPAS is a charity that sees 100,000 women a year for reproductive healthcare services including pregnancy counselling, abortion care, miscarriage management and contraception at clinics across the UK.

It supports and advocates for reproductive choice, and runs the Centre for Reproductive Research and Communication, which seeks to develop and deliver a research agenda that furthers women’s access to evidence-based reproductive healthcare, driven by an understanding of women’s perspectives and needs.

BPAS has decided to set up its own fertility network to address the inequalities in IVF provision in England that it found in extensive research.

England’s first not-for-profit IVF clinic will open in Central London in September. It plans to undercut private clinics and charge only the true cost of treatment, which it estimates will be between £3,000 and £3,500 each IVF cycle, not including drugs. There will be no expensive add-ons such as embryo glue or assisted hatching – which patients often feel pressured into accepting at a very vulnerable time, despite doubts on these working.

The BPAS clinic is set to open for egg collection and embryo transfers. Scans and other appointments will take place at satellite clinics operating from existing BPAS centres outside the capital, starting first in Peterborough and Swindon, before being rolled out across England.

The satellite clinics will use separate entrances and different clinics for patients seeking abortions and fertility treatment.

The BPAS clinic will start small, aiming to carry out 200 egg collections in its first year, but it hopes to scale it up and eventually become a registered IVF provider for the NHS, which means some patients could choose to have their NHS-funded cycles there.

The clinic will be regulated by the Human Embryology and Fertility Authority and it will be transparent not just in its pricing but also in its success rates. Private clinics have been accused of using misleading graphs and statistics to inflate their rates, by not being clear that the data only includes women under 35, according to the fertility watchdog .

Women should be offered three cycles of IVF on the NHS, according to guidelines from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), which recommends which drugs and treatments should be available on the NHS in England and Wales.

But IVF provision has been and is increasingly being cut back in many areas, with some now offering no paid-for fertility treatment and others only one or two cycles. Some refuse to treat women over 35, those who cannot prove they are in a stable relationship or couples with one partner who has had a child in a previous relationship.

Many couples are forced to go overseas for affordable fertility treatment.

BPAS sees parallels between the provision of IVF in 2020 with the provision of abortion in 1968, when the charity was founded. In 1968, women were unable to access NHS-funded abortion care and were forced to turn to private providers, who often exploited their desperation by charging high prices.