To enable patients in Bedfordshire to gain fertility care closer to home, a NHS IVF satellite centre was opened at the Luton and Dunstable University Hospital (L&D) in 2013 in partnership with Bourn Hall Clinic. Now ten years later the partnership is still going strong and hundreds of babies have been born following IVF. Members of Bourn Hall’s team were recently invited to help celebrate ‘a decade of success’.
Mr Jude Jose, Lead for Fertility Services at the L&D, said that in the past decade more than 400 IVF babies had been born, commenting: “We are immensely proud to deliver such a dedicated and high quality service to our local couples.”
The NHS satellite IVF centre has meant that patients in the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes (BLMK) region can have the majority of their routine consultations and appointments close to home, travelling to Bourn Hall Cambridge just for specialist IVF services such as egg collection, fertilisation and embryo transfer. The two teams work closely together to deliver a seamless service that has been well received by patients.
Dr Thanos Papathanasiou, CEO and Medical Director of Bourn Hall, attended the celebration along with his colleagues Leona Crookston and Jo Sharman, joint Lead Nurses at Bourn Hall’s Cambridge Clinic.
Dr Papathanasiou said: “The strong partnership between the dedicated fertility team at Luton & Dunstable Hospital and Bourn Hall is a brilliant example of how beneficial a joined-up and collaborative approach to fertility services can be for patients.”
In 2020 when L&D and Bedford Hospital merged to create Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust the dedicated fertility centre at Luton was integrated with the fertility unit at Bedford Hospital so that the two services are available under one roof. Miss Liliana Grosu, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist from Bedford Hospital, recently joined the two Consultants Mr Jude Jose and Ms Shanaz Akbar in running the fertility services at the L&D.
To access the L&D Fertility Centre patients need to first contact their GP.
More about the Bedfordshire NHS IVF Satellite.
[Photograph kindly supplied by the Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust]
