Introduction
There is IVF expertise within the Mapper Monday household here in North London so this was an easy choice with which to begin the blog. There is a steady stream of stories in the news about the so-called 'postcode lottery' of accessing treatment and procedures through NHS England. It's no different when it comes to IVF treatment cycles.
NHS services are co-ordinated by local area Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) of which there are currently 191 across England. For more information on the role of CCGs visit www.nhscc.org .
Data Sources & Limitations
Data on the availability of IVF cycles through NHS England is available publicly via the policy statements of each CCG across England. The data used for the following map was sourced from Fertility Fairness who had done the task of collating all the information in tabular form.
The data is from 2018 at which time there were 195 CCGs across England. That total is now 191 so there have been a number of mergers since 2018.
The Map
This is a simple thematic map which shows the variation by Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in the number of IVF cycles that are funded by NHS England. There are just 4 shading categories as the range of funded treatment cycles ranges from none to a maximum of 3.
The majority of CCGs (117 of 195, or exactly 60%) offer 1 funded cycle of IVF treatment. A small number do not offer any funded treatment at all - all of these in the South-east and East Anglia. Those CCGs offering 2 cycles of funded treatment are across Kent, East Sussex & Surrey in the south of England, parts of East Anglia and some parts of North-west England and southern parts of Yorkshire. Those offering 3 cycles are generally in the North of England.
UPDATE (20-Apr-2020)
Since I first published this post, I have developed an interactive web-based version of the map which is hosted here.