More stuff

Ballarat is not looking good:

Hi Kelly,
Your initial consult fee do see Dr Bardsley will be $167.00 of which $99.25 will not be claimable from medicare. IVF fees vary depending on whether you have private health insurance. The up front fee will be approx $4,500, you will be eliglble for a medicare rebate the amount being dependant on your medicare safety net. Blood tests will need tobe done through St John of God Pathology and scans through Lake Imaging so I imagine Ballarat will be your closest providers. Hope you can make sense of all this! We can clarify and give you detailed quotes when you see Dr Bardsley.

Bugger. Never mind, if all goes well on Tuesday with MIVF, I will cancel that appointment all together.

Also received this email in reply to another query I had with our PHI -

The item number 13212 is covered under your policy. You have Public Hospital cover with a $400 excess. The item is only covered in a public hospital with the doctor of your own choice.

Which surprised me, although I think our excess will be more than MIVF charge anyway!!

Extra info

I made the appt to see a Dr at MIVF and then realised she was not the Sunshine (closest) clinic Dr. I rang MIVF this morning though, and asked does it have to be that clinics Dr or can I see Dr Foster at her rooms but still do all my bloods and scans at sunshine?

Yes! Dr is irrelevant. Thats good because the Dr at Sunshine is only there Wed arvo and because of small mans school hours, afternoons are not suitable. So I would have had to see him elsewhere at other times anyway.

Also realised that to get to that clinic, its not TOO bad in terms of traffic because I only go as far down the Calder as Sydenham then turn off, and it doesn't get hectic really, until from and after the Sydenham on ramp (as far as I can recall anyway). And if I tried it once and found it was busy, I could always go the back way thereafter, which would be just an extra 10 mins or so. Not so bad after all...

I emailed Ballarat IVF today also, and asked if IVF is required, how do the payment options all work, and I am going to call MIVF accounts later and ask the same. Am hoping one or both, allow you to pay just the gap fee upfront, and bill medicare directly for their share. This would mean the difference between needing to find $3000 (which we can currently do by mid November); and $5000 which would not be possible til Jan/Feb next year.

We will try something before the years end (from Nov) - whether that is IVF or IUI is yet to be seen. Because we already have a child, our safety net for medicare is far lower, at $520 of which we already have $120 toward, and given I am still to see a GP for referrals and have these 2 specialist appointments, we are obviously going to be close to it anyway, so might as well start now. Oh correction, I think we are now on 1029 safety net coz we dont get family tax A anymore, only B. Bugger! Thats 500 less we get back! Oh well. Otherwise, costs are as I imagined, although next weeks appointment just to see the Dr is $170-. Yowsers!