Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) acknowledges that on 25 July 2018 the world's first IVF (in-vitro-fertilisation) baby, Louise Joy Brown, celebrates her 40th birthday;

(b) notes that:

  (i) IVF clinics provide a valuable service to the Australian community,

  (ii) there is a lack of publicly available performance data for individual IVF clinics—an annual report is produced by the University of New South Wales's National Perinatal Epidemiology & Statistics Unit (NPESU) but it only provides a national overview of the performance of participating clinics,

  (iii) no clinic-specific information is made public—IVF clinics can choose what information they disclose, if any, relating to their own success rates,

  (iv) according to the 2014 NPESU report, live birth rates between fertility clinics varied from between 9 per cent and 24 per cent for fresh cycles, and in 2012, the difference in live birth rates between clinics was as low as 4 per cent and as high as 31 per cent, the most recent report, for 2015, did not disclose these statistics,

  (v) in 2015, Richard Henshaw, a senior fertility expert with the Monash group of IVF clinics told the ABC's AM program that clinics in the top 25th percentile cost Medicare around $2 million to produce 100 live births, and clinics in the bottom 25th percentile cost Medicare triple that amount to produce 100 live births,

  (vi) the average cost of one IVF cycle in Australia (excluding other ancillary treatments) is $9,290, with estimated out of pocket costs being $4,502,

  (vii) lack of transparency rewards poor performing clinics while denying consumers the opportunity to make an informed choice about their treatment options,

  (viii) in the US, the CDC publishes performance data for 463 IVF clinics in a searchable database, broken down by procedures, pregnancies and live birth rates, and

  (ix) in the UK, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority publishes broad performance data for individual clinics and allows patients to rate clinics and see whether the clinic meets formal inspector standards; and

(c) calls on the Federal Government to work with industry to publish individual clinic performance data in a searchable database to ensure Australian families are able to make an informed choice in relation to their fertility treatment.

Question agreed to.