By stewartb
The Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK’s independent regulator of fertility treatment and research using human embryos, has just (July 18) published this report:
‘Fertility treatment 2022: preliminary trends and figures – preliminary UK statistics for IVF and DI treatment, storage, and donation.’ (https://www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/publications/research-and-data/fertility-treatment-2022-preliminary-trends-and-figures/ )
The findings were the subject of a BBC Radio 4 Today programme item and they are covered in an article on the BBC News website under the headline ‘Fall in proportion of IVF cycles funded by NHS’. Both the Today programme and the BBC News website focus on the UK statistics for NHS funding. The latter opens with this: ‘The proportion of IVF cycles funded by the NHS has dropped from 40% in 2012 to 27% in 2022, the UK fertility regulator says’. And it adds: ‘The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) says funding for in-vitro fertilisation treatment varies “considerably” across the UK.’ Apart from a general reference to a ‘postcode lottery’, neither BBC report provides any details of the nature and scale of difference in terms of the NHS support. Wondering why?
One develops a sixth sense about BBC and other mainstream media reports of UK-wide statistics on matters of importance to voters. One is especially ‘alert’ when a UK statistic relates to a public service which is devolved.
What is the BBC failing to report?
Here are the main points from the HFEA report on public funding of IVF treatments:
- ‘NHS funding for IVF cycles varies considerably across the UK depending on national funding criteria and local funding across Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) in England. In 2022, NHS-funded IVF cycles decreased to 27% across the UK, falling from 40% in 2012.’ (my emphasis) This is a huge drop in the value of the UK metric.
- ‘The number of NHS-funded IVF cycles carried out continued to vary across the UK with decreases of 17% in England, 16% in Wales, and 7% in Scotland from 2019 to 2022.’ These are self-evidently huge differences between the three nations – but not newsworthy!
- ‘In 2022, Scotland had the highest rate of NHS-funded IVF cycles at 53% compared to 34% in Wales and 24% in England. We are unable to report values for Northern Ireland for comparison due to technical issues in reporting from the largest clinic in Northern Ireland.’ Again, these are self-evidently huge differences between the three nations – but not newsworthy!
- ‘Although the number of NHS-funded IVF cycles in Scotland had remained similar in recent years, this slightly decreased from 2,936 cycles in 2019 to 2,723 in 2022. NHS-funded IVF cycles in England decreased from 19,631 in 2019 to 16,242 in 2022 (-17%). In Wales, NHS-funded IVF cycles decreased from 1,094 to 919 (-16%).’
Let’s make good the absence of a percentage figure for Scotland in this extract from the HFEA report in order to make comparison more straightforward! The drop in cycles funded by NHS Scotland between 2019 and 2022 is 213: this equates to a drop of (just) 7.2% compared to drops of 17% and 16% in England and Wales respectively. These are self-evidently huge differences between the three nations – but not newsworthy!
The graphics above, reproduced from the HFEA report and its annex, show the statistics for three UK nations and for England’s regions. The contrast in percentages for NHS funded IVF treatments in Scotland and the percentages for most regions in England is also stark – but not newsworthy!
The HFEA offers this context for the overall fall in NHS funded treatments: ‘The decrease in NHS-funded IVF treatments across the UK may relate to increased waiting times for further investigations prior to accessing NHS-funded treatments. .… Changes in national and regional funding criteria both in the devolved nations and across ICBs in England may have also had an impact on the number of NHS-funded IVF cycles, however changes in patient demographics such as increasing age may also mean that fewer patients meet the relevant criteria for NHS funding and therefore may need to self-fund ’their treatment.’
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
If the BBC were to report nation by nation data – and I doubt if they would – they would not do as you have done and express the reduction as a percentage of the earlier figure, but would use the simple arithmetic reduction data because Scotland’s fall is 9 points below where it was and England’s is only 8 and Wales 5.
Alasdair Macdonald
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I also caught the item on R4 on the way to work. And I noticed the lack of mention of Scotland’s scheme too.
One question. Sounds a bit silly, but what’s a ‘cycle’?
For instance, I know a couple who took the NHS ‘route’. The 1st attempt failed, the 2nd was successful and, because they’d always wanted more than one child they decided to see if the 3rd attempt would work.
Is that:
3 cycles – each attempt being 1
2 cycles – because the course was split into 2 batches
1 cycle – the 3 funded attempts count as 1, no matter when/how you use them.
In any event, that 53% is still pretty impressive – especially in the circumstances.
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I had a colleague who underwent IVF and the first two cycles failed. As the third cycle approached, she became increasingly tense with the fear of a third failure. Fortunately, it was successful and her child is now attending secondary school.
Knowing someone in the situation brought home to me how important IVF services are and the joy that success brought.
Alasdair Macdonald
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