MUHC Reproductive Centre moving to new home

The last department left behind at the Royal Victoria Hospital is finally moving.

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TheMUHCReproductive Centre, tucked away on the sixth floor of the old Women's Pavilion, is gearing up to move attheend of October, eighteen months after the rest of the hospital transferred operationsto the Glen site.

There had beentalk that the centre would be relocated to a building onde MaisonneuveBoulevard West, closeto the new MUHCsuperhospital.

Instead, it will move to Place Dupuis, near the Berri-UQAMMetro station.

Dr. William Buckett, the reproductive centre's director, said it is takingover the space that used to be occupied by the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Montral's (CHUM) fertility clinic.

CHUM clinic merged with Ste-Justine's

When the government announced the end of publiclyfunded in-vitro fertilization last fall, the CHUM decided to merge its operations with the IVF clinic at Ste-JustineHospital.

"For us, the benefit is everything is ready," said Buckett. "It's a lab that worked well, and I think it's a way to avoid unnecessarily spending more public money."

Buckett predicts many patients will like the new location, which is centrally located and right on the Metro line.

"It was always a bit of a pain getting to the Vic, even when the whole hospital was here," said Buckett.

Bill 20 backgrounder

Last November, the Quebec government dramatically changed the way it funds fertility treatment, with the passing of Bill20.

• A breakdown of the changes to Quebec's IVF coverage

Couples who want to access IVF now mustpay for the procedure upfront, at a cost of about $10,000. They will get some money back as tax credits,based on a sliding scale linked totheir income.

In the lead-up to the law's enactment, the MUHCelectedtokeep the MUHC Reproductive Centre at the otherwise-vacant 19th-centurylegacy buildingsof theRoyal Victoria Hospital, which allowed it to monitor the fallout from the changes wrought by the new law.

As predicted, those changesled to a dramatic reduction in thenumber ofpatients and IVF procedures.

Job losses

About 40 per cent of the staff who worked in the embryology lab and 20 per cent of the centre's nurses lost their positions, Buckett said.

Since then, he said, patientnumbers are slowly creeping back up asprospective parentsfind ways to pay for the procedure, but it's nowhere near what it was.

• Cost of funding IVF in Quebec a cautionary tale for other jurisdictions: study

However, Buckett says even that has a silver lining.

In the past, when the government was footing the bill for IVF, some womenwho had little likelihoodof successcontinued to undergo fertility treatment.

The new rules have discouragedmany of those women, so those now being treatedhave a better chance of getting pregnant.

"We will see an increase in the live birth rate," Buckett predicts.

October move date

The reproductive centre hopes to moveto Place Dupuisover the next two monthsand to be fully operational by Oct.23.

Not being right next to the Glen sitewill mean a bit of shuttling back and forth for embryologists and doctors, said Buckett, but they'll try to keep travel to a minimum.