NHS Referrals

The Infertility Clinic at the Women's Hospital in the Leicester Royal Infirmary is the major provider of infertility treatment in the county. The Infertility Clinic is therefore the chief source of referrals to the Leicester Fertility Centre.

Even if there is a direct referral by your general practitioner, gynaecologist or urologist for assisted conception treatment, you are likely to find that you are first seen for an initial assessment of your problem by one of the Leicester Fertility Centre consultants either in the Infertility Clinic or in their own gynaecology clinics.

The reason for this is that it frequently becomes apparent that the treatment suggested by the referring doctor is inappropriate and that either full infertility investigations have not yet been performed or other treatments should be performed first.

In most cases, although the suggested treatment in the referral letter may be correct, e.g. a referral for IVF because of a very low sperm count, it is worth seeing you first in another clinic to briefly discuss the options, rather than put you onto a waiting list for the Leicester Fertility Centre and then find that it may be possible to improve the sperm count and make assisted conception unnecessary.

Please inform us if you change your address or no longer require treatment.

Your first contact with the Leicester Fertility Centre may be an informal visit to meet one of our nursing staff who will welcome you to the unit and explain the general procedure to you.

NHS Waiting Lists

In 2006, following increased funding from local PCTs the waiting lists for NHS funded infertility treatment have been considerably reduced, for most treatments patients can be seen immediately for initial investigations.

Private Referrals

Your first contact with the Leicester Fertility Centre may be an informal visit to meet one of our nursing staff who will welcome you to the unit. The procedure of referral will be explained to you, and in general terms you will be able to discuss how the centre may be able to offer you help. This is free of charge.

We prefer you to be referred by your GP or by a hospital consultant. There is often a considerable amount of information that the surgery will have about your infertility problems including relevant test results. We fully appreciate that if you have only recently arrived in the UK, you may not yet have a GP in Leicester. If there are any results of investigations carried out in your home country it is always useful to bring copies of the results of these tests with you to your first consultation.

The Leicester Fertility Centre private patient clinics are held on Saturday mornings at the SPIRE Hospital, Leicester or Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings at the Leicester Fertility Centre.

Patient Exclusions

The Leicester Fertility Centre does not discriminate against any group in society. All requests for treatment are considered on their own merits, in accordance with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HF&E Act) of 1990 and the Code of Practice of the HFEA.

We do however have certain limitations even for private treatment, and these essentially are linked to the age of the woman and the reasonable prospects of a successful outcome. Our ceiling age for IVF is 43 years. We are prepared to consider ovulation induction, intrauterine insemination and donor insemination within the 40 - 42 year age group. The ceiling age to receive donor eggs or embryos is 49 years.