When we started the journey to NHS funded IVF I was quite naive, I did not realise what a minefield it is to try get funding . It is also a huge post code lottery as to whether your local NHS trust provides funding, what the criteria is etc. The National Institute for Health Care and Excellence (NICE) sets guidelines for NHS funded IVF however these do not have to be followed by the individual Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). I will write more on this soon as it is astonishing.
A bit about CCG’S, most GP practice’s are a member of a CCG, these are the governing bodies of the NHS, the Big Brother of the health world. The CCG’s replaced the primary care trust in 2013 and are responsible for 2/3’s of the NHS budget, clinical commissioning such as mental health services and yep you guessed it IVF funding. The CCG you belong to is based on who your GP is, now the GP you are a patient of is area dependant too, normally we choose the GP closest to our address, but what if we move? There is no strict law on having to move GP’S however the NHS guidelines states you need to be a patient of a practice that is close enough to have a home visit from a GP if needed. My argument to this is not many people have home visits these days and if I was sick my husband, mum, brother or neighbour would take me to the GP.
So our conundrum… when we started the journey we lived in area A, had a local GP who was part of Happyland CCG, we have now moved to area B and are not in our local GP boundary and if we changed GP’S to an area B GP we would fall under a different CCG and that is where it gets messy. Different CCG’S have different criteria for IVF funding and there is a risk that we would have to start all over again which as you can imagine after nearly 3 years on this journey is not an option.
I did some googling and found mixed opinions, option 1; is to not change our address leave a redirection on our mail and they will never know, now I was in favor of this option however the scaredy cat in me was worried they would find out somehow and we would get in serious trouble. Option 2 is to write to the practice and explain the situation and then the GP partners can decide if they are happy to keep us on their register.
We already have been granted the funding so am hoping the latter works, if not it may get messy I have sent my email to the practice manager of Happyland GP surgery and now we wait .
Searching for a positive 