I'm about to commence treatment at the Fertility Centre. I initially started the process with Melbourne IVF, but was shocked at the cost and out of pocket expenses. The Fertility Centre is part of Mel IVF but operating under a different Trading name in order to offer bulk billing to patients. The Fertility Center offers serveral options for payment:
1. 60:40 option, where you can pay 60% of treatment cost at the commencement of your treatment and then 40% is due at the time of egg collection
2. Full payment up front. Rebate will be processed approx 3wks after embryo transfer (quicker if you have a bank acct details set up with Medicare).
3. Electronic Transfer - bank transfer or bank cheque.
4. Credit Card

My husband and I were also struggling coming up with the funds and we didn't want to use a credit card. We have taken out a Flexi Loan with Westpac, which allows you to use the funds as you need them and only pay interest on what you take out. We realised we could pay up fron this way and then when the rebate comes back we would be out of pocket approx $3000. We have been saving and should be able to pay this back relatively quickly.

two important things you should know with Fertility Centre:
1. they tend to use lower dosage of ovary stimulation drugs (average yeild is 4-6 eggs where Melbourne IVF average yeild is 9 eggs)
2. if you have embryos left over they will continue to fertalise them to day 5 and then freeze them. Melbourne IVF freeze all remaining embryos on day 2.

Hope this helps a little.

Good luck to you all