Newsroom columnist Anna Rawhiti-Connell's baffled and frustrated with the health system as she and her husband go through fertility treatment.
Photo: 123RF
During the process she's been overcharged $1000 and been confused with another patient, leading her to get a text saying she was having surgery in two days.
Rawhiti-Connell told Jesse Mulligan her story began like most people seeking fertility treatment – the inability to conceive naturally.
“We started sounding out our options by talking to fertility clinics and then just doing what’s become kind of the hall mark of the whole thing really which is jumping through hoop after hoop, not really knowing what we’re doing.”
After discovering that the public system only offers one round of fertility treatment and involved several barriers such as age and BMI requirements, Rawhiti-Connell and her husband turned to the private sector.
She says her experience in the private sector hasn’t been much better than public in the two clinics she’s dealt with.
“The people themselves, as individuals, as specialists, as experts, they’re doing the best that they can.
“I think in some ways it’s reflective of my experiences with other bits of the health system or things that are to do with your body or your mental health where it’s just not very joined up and you get dealt with as a series of body parts or procedures or treatments and nobody is really there helping you map out the process, managing their expectations, or even just giving you and indication of what bill might be coming down the line.”
Rawhiti-Connell says she has raised her concerns with the clinic about the communication breakdowns and other concerns but also decided to write her column in the hope it would help people understand the complexities involved in the treatment.
She says fertility treatment remains a taboo topic and believes more dialogue will help the public understand it better.
She also hopes clinics might better understand their patients’ concerns too.
“There is probably room for more roles that are kind of around holding people’s hands through it a little bit… because quite often you’ll see a specialist and their job is to deal with that particular body part and I remember being in the room and the conversation was all about my husband and I didn’t really feel like I was allowed to ask questions about ‘when do we start with me’ or ‘what do we do with me’.
“A lot of it for me is just making people feel like they’re in a position to ask questions and to get a clear idea of expectations and what might be coming at the end, and for these clinics to communicate with us in a way that’s 2020 and not 1987.”
You can read more about Anna Rawhiti-Connell’s experience with fertility treatment in her Newsroom column here.
