Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This series features conversations about pregnancy, complications and loss. Please
Speaker 2: take care while listening. By the beginning of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: kind Body was riding high. It had opened thirteen clinics
Speaker 2: in ten cities, and then in February, the company announced
Speaker 2: a plan that would double its size. Kind Body said
Speaker 2: it would acquire a larger competitor, a fertility chain called
Speaker 2: Bios Fertility Institute. Unlike the venture capital and corporate world
Speaker 2: that Kindbody's founder, Gina Bartesi came from, Bios was more
Speaker 2: of a family business. It was founded in twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: by a doctor named Angie Beltzos.
Speaker 3: Angie is unique. She is extraordinarily talented as a physician,
Speaker 3: and she has even more talent it as a clinical leader,
Speaker 3: just as a leader in general.
Speaker 2: That's Gina talking to Griffin Jones, host of the Inside
Speaker 2: Reproductive Health podcast, back in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: She knows a tremendous amount about business, about productivity, about margin.
Speaker 2: With Bios, kind Body immediately doubled its number of clinics
Speaker 2: from thirteen to twenty six, and Gina wasn't done. She
Speaker 2: had her sights set on doubling the number of clinics again.
Speaker 3: But we're opening Seattle, We're opening Dallas, Houston, Orange County, Miami, Charlotte,
Speaker 3: We're opening Washington, DC next week. Our plan calls for
Speaker 3: fifty locations within the next two years.
Speaker 2: In one of their first appearances as a new company,
Speaker 2: executives from Bios and kind Body ring the bell at
Speaker 2: the New York Stock Exchange. That summer, doctors and executives
Speaker 2: from the two fertility companies gathered for a retreat in
Speaker 2: Chicago to kick off this new chapter. At the front
Speaker 2: of the room was Gina selling a vision of the future.
Speaker 2: A former marketing executive from kind Body remembers that day.
Speaker 4: We're coming together, Bios and kind Body. We're all on board.
Speaker 2: We are not using her real name. She and others
Speaker 2: you'll hear from in this episode asked for anonymity because
Speaker 2: kind Body has threatened legal action against employees they believed
Speaker 2: were talking to journalists. A voice actor is reading what
Speaker 2: she told me.
Speaker 4: Here's where a focus is. Here's a motivator for the team.
Speaker 4: I mean, Gina knows she knows how to command a room,
Speaker 4: an excited room, and it was really just focused on
Speaker 4: here's the growth. Here's how we're going to do it,
Speaker 4: and we're all going to be so rich at the
Speaker 4: end of this journey.
Speaker 2: Gina Bartesi declined to comment for this series. A spokeswoman
Speaker 2: said this was because of quote multiple factual inaccuracies, as
Speaker 2: well as continued biased reporting given Bloomberg's lack of context
Speaker 2: provide to readers regarding the fertility industry kind body and
Speaker 2: her role as an experienced leader in the field. Asked
Speaker 2: to identify specific inaccuracies, the spokeswoman declined to comment. Part
Speaker 2: of the biosteal was that after the acquisition, Gina would
Speaker 2: step back a CEO. She would stay on as chairman
Speaker 2: of the board, but would hand over the reigns of
Speaker 2: day to day operations in an effort to make room
Speaker 2: for the Bios executives. Gina knew a lot about employee benefits,
Speaker 2: egg freezing, and how to raise money, but the next
Speaker 2: phase of growth needed leaders who knew how to grow
Speaker 2: multiple IVF clinics at once, and Gina saw the founder
Speaker 2: of Bios, Angie Beltzos, as the person who could do that.
Speaker 2: Here's Gina again on the Inside Reproductive Health podcast.
Speaker 3: Now I will tell you Angie has uped the game.
Speaker 3: A lot of doctors I talked to are very comfortable
Speaker 3: doing one hundred and fifty cases a year, and they
Speaker 3: say that listen, I do ten to twelve cases them up.
Speaker 3: I sell an IVF cycle for twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: and that's my model.
Speaker 2: With Angie's help, Gina envisioned higher volumes of IVF.
Speaker 3: You look at the physician productivity of her doctors and
Speaker 3: it's extraordinary. One of her lead physicians did more than
Speaker 3: one thousand cases last year. That's extraordinary.
Speaker 2: Kind Bodies leaders also had their site set on an
Speaker 2: initial public offering, the kind of move that can bring
Speaker 2: a big payout for those who got into the company early.
Speaker 5: He is the rocket ship analogy a lot.
Speaker 4: We are on a rocket ship to the moon, and.
Speaker 6: Then he always talked about, like the rocket ship, we're
Speaker 6: going to like last to the moon and help everyone's fertility.
Speaker 4: We're gonna get yellow planes. Everyone's gonna have a yellow plane.
Speaker 4: Who's gonna buy the first plane?
Speaker 2: Blind Bline. Amid all the talk of private jets and
Speaker 2: worldwide expansion, the acquisition had saddled Kind Body with more
Speaker 2: financial pressure, and it came at a time when the
Speaker 2: start up was already struggling with operational issues from Bloomberg
Speaker 2: and iHeart podcasts. This is IVF disrupted the kind Body story.
Speaker 2: I'm Jackie Devalos. That spring, the two companies came together.
Speaker 2: Employees were told it was the start of kind Body's
Speaker 2: most exciting chapter.
Speaker 1: Yet.
Speaker 2: One of the executives who came over from Bios who
Speaker 2: were calling Emily remembers the promises made. An actor is
Speaker 2: reading what she told me.
Speaker 1: It was a huge part of the deal was that
Speaker 1: people wouldn't lose their jobs because the two companies came together,
Speaker 1: that there was more than enough work to go around.
Speaker 1: If we had redundant positions. We were growing, so let's
Speaker 1: figure out how to reallocate someone, train someone on something new.
Speaker 2: But the deal in kind Body's aggressive growth plans that
Speaker 2: followed it were based on overly rosy assumptions, according to
Speaker 2: what I heard from current and former executives. The company
Speaker 2: didn't disclose how much it paid to buy Bios, but
Speaker 2: former executives tell me it was substantial. Kind Body had
Speaker 2: used up a lot of its cash and the expectation
Speaker 2: was that the deal would result in more people coming
Speaker 2: through the doors. The Bios locations were already up and running,
Speaker 2: and they were quickly remodeled to fit the kind Body aesthetic.
Speaker 2: These clinics were also profitable, something kind Body couldn't say
Speaker 2: about many of its other clinics. According to internal documents,
Speaker 2: I saw Atlanta, Austin, and some California locations were burning
Speaker 2: through cash. This wasn't part of the plan. When they'd
Speaker 2: originally opened. Kind Body had expected the retail centric clinics
Speaker 2: would attract a flood of new people looking for fertility services.
Speaker 2: They also expected deals with employers to translate into a
Speaker 2: steady flow of business, but former employees and executives told
Speaker 2: me it was more of a trick. Part of the
Speaker 2: reason is because people just weren't using their IVF benefit
Speaker 2: at the rate kind Body had projected. Another challenge was
Speaker 2: that IVF patients take time to cultivate to build trust with.
Speaker 2: Even so, the company continued to spend and expand they
Speaker 2: were banking on patient volume catching up. Here's Emily the
Speaker 2: former bios employee, again.
Speaker 1: The honeymoonish period was probably maybe nine months. We weren't
Speaker 1: getting IVF patients in the door. We weren't building the
Speaker 1: IVF volume to then grow and hit the projections. That
Speaker 1: we had if you work backwards. The numbers were created
Speaker 1: on bad math. So yes, of course you have to
Speaker 1: make hard decisions if you're not hitting your projections.
Speaker 2: By the fall of twenty twenty two, layoffs began, and
Speaker 2: according to Emily, they were done in waves.
Speaker 1: The first round of layoffs just laid a horrific foundation
Speaker 1: for profound anxiety. They're often rolling layoffs. There might have
Speaker 1: been an initial batch and then everyone felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm safe, and then two, three, four weeks later others
Speaker 1: would trickle out, and that hit to productivity cannot be understated.
Speaker 1: People were not able to do their best work ever. Again, really,
Speaker 1: there was always this concern that they would be next.
Speaker 2: According to internal documents, the cuts hit hardest among those
Speaker 2: working directly with patients, medical assistance, billing staff, and a
Speaker 2: roll kind body called financial navigators. Financial navigators worked remotely
Speaker 2: handling patients across all kind body clinics. Here's one of them.
Speaker 6: So I feel like the financial navigator is probably next
Speaker 6: to the doctor. We will basically come in and we
Speaker 6: will go over your benefits, we will verify anything. We
Speaker 6: will be the person who gets any authorizations. If you
Speaker 6: have insurance, we will then cancel you on anything that's
Speaker 6: going into come out of pocket for you. If you
Speaker 6: didn't pay, then you can't start your cycle. We're essentially
Speaker 6: the last person you talked to before you start treatment.
Speaker 2: For patients, financial navigators were more than just number crunchers.
Speaker 2: They were guides through a complex and costly journey where
Speaker 2: a single cycle of IVF could cost as much as
Speaker 2: sixteen thousand dollars. But as the layoffs continued, the remaining
Speaker 2: navigators found themselves overwhelmed.
Speaker 5: Here's another There was probably ten or twelve people on
Speaker 5: our team, and then at one point there were three
Speaker 5: or four of us, and we were in charge of
Speaker 5: all of the markets, all of the offices. And then
Speaker 5: it was just like here's more work, and here's more work,
Speaker 5: and here's more work, to the point where we were
Speaker 5: on the phone with each other and on meetings with
Speaker 5: each other just breaking down crime.
Speaker 6: We had to do the phone calls, we had to
Speaker 6: cut the money, we had to check the cycles, the schedules, like,
Speaker 6: we had to do all of it, and we had
Speaker 6: no help. I was drowning.
Speaker 7: We were like, this rocket ship is like nose diving
Speaker 7: right now, and if we're not going to jump off right. Now,
Speaker 7: we're all doomed. There's no one on this rocket ship
Speaker 7: that is going to survive.
Speaker 2: The two financial navigators said they worried the mounting workload
Speaker 2: would open them up to mistakes.
Speaker 7: People are going to make errors. Things are going to happen,
Speaker 7: The stations are going to happen. You would quote the
Speaker 7: wrong amount, You could send the wrong patience financial estimate
Speaker 7: to the wrong patient, you could attach the wrong thing.
Speaker 7: Like we have to double check and triple track everything,
Speaker 7: and if you didn't send the authorization with the right codes,
Speaker 7: you'd have to go and start the whole process again,
Speaker 7: which is a two week process than now, putting off
Speaker 7: the patient's treatment.
Speaker 2: With IVF, timing is everything. You're trying to sync up
Speaker 2: multiple biological processes that normally happen naturally over weeks, from
Speaker 2: getting the eggs to mature at just the right time
Speaker 2: to ensuring the uterine lining is perfectly ready for implantation.
Speaker 2: If your timing is off even by a day or two,
Speaker 2: the whole cycle could be unsuccessful because embryos need exactly
Speaker 2: the right conditions at exactly the right moment to have
Speaker 2: the best chance of developing into a healthy pregnancy.
Speaker 5: But if you made a mistake, it was the worst
Speaker 5: thing in the entire world.
Speaker 2: Patients frustrations with kind Body started showing up in negative
Speaker 2: reviews online. The company was now being criticized for exactly
Speaker 2: what it claimed to be fixing confusing bills, hitting costs,
Speaker 2: and a lack of transparency. Patients described getting unexpected charges
Speaker 2: weeks after procedures, insurance claims that were filed incorrectly, and
Speaker 2: authorizations that arrived too late. These weren't just administrative headaches
Speaker 2: for patients already stretching their finances to afford fertility treatment.
Speaker 2: These mistakes could mean the difference between starting a cycle
Speaker 2: or having to wait months to save up again. In
Speaker 2: the c suite, some executives were losing confidence. Kind Body's
Speaker 2: high profile CFO had quit after less than a year
Speaker 2: on the job, and then the chief scientific officer left
Speaker 2: the company. I reached out to both of them, and
Speaker 2: neither wanted to speak to me for this podcast because
Speaker 2: they signed non disclosure agreements. In written comments, kind Body
Speaker 2: told me it hired more customer service staff and made
Speaker 2: significant improvements to its billing processes. It disputed that the
Speaker 2: former chief scientific officer lost confidence in the organization. And
Speaker 2: said executives leave companies for various, often innocuous reasons. For
Speaker 2: doctors and lab staff, the chief scientific officer leaving was
Speaker 2: more than just another executive departure. He had been the
Speaker 2: guardian of their scientific protocols, the person ensuring that the complex,
Speaker 2: precise work of creating and handling embryos was done right.
Speaker 2: Here's Emily, the former Bios executive again.
Speaker 1: I think you can see some of the personnel changes
Speaker 1: in the chief scientific officer role, and a lot of
Speaker 1: movement in terms of who was in charge of labs
Speaker 1: and people had to step in in interim fashions and
Speaker 1: people left. Physicians were concerned. You can't just go grab
Speaker 1: a benchtop scientist. It takes years, years to train as
Speaker 1: skilled embryologist, and if you treat them as disposable people,
Speaker 1: the word spreads.
Speaker 2: The pressure to do more with less was already trickling
Speaker 2: from the corporate offices all the way down to the
Speaker 2: labs and in at Atlanta. Another preventable mistake would change
Speaker 2: a woman's life forever. That's coming up. By the time
Speaker 2: Vernita Pearsall started at Kind Bodies Atlanta Clinic in the
Speaker 2: fall of twenty twenty two, the cracks were starting to show.
Speaker 8: It seemed as if there was a revolving door when
Speaker 8: it came to employees in the Atlanta office.
Speaker 2: Vernita had seen her share of medical practices, but nothing
Speaker 2: quite like this. While other kind body locations were also struggling,
Speaker 2: she says, Atlanta was in free fall.
Speaker 8: At one point, a lot of the executives came to
Speaker 8: the office in Atlanta due to things occurring with so
Speaker 8: much turnaround.
Speaker 2: I saw an internal presentation that backed up what Vernita
Speaker 2: was seeing. The Atlanta clinic had a staggering sixty four
Speaker 2: percent turnover rate among its clinical staff. To handle the volume,
Speaker 2: staff was told to move patients through their appointments even faster.
Speaker 8: It was that feeling of a conveyor belt going in,
Speaker 8: going out next, going in, going out next, And it
Speaker 8: looked aesthetically like a soothing place, but in all actuality
Speaker 8: that was not the case. It was pretty much let's
Speaker 8: get them in, let's get them out.
Speaker 2: Former employees told me. Staff inside the embryology lab, which
Speaker 2: required the most precise and time intensive work, was burned out.
Speaker 2: They struggled to keep up with a patient load that
Speaker 2: kept growing even as their team kept shrinking.
Speaker 8: A lot of times. They were there before I started,
Speaker 8: and they were there after I would go home, and
Speaker 8: they had to work many weekends, many holidays.
Speaker 2: In text messages shared with me, one embryologist in Atlanta
Speaker 2: told a fellow staffer quote, I have to be coach,
Speaker 2: quarterback and wide receiver. We do not have the space,
Speaker 2: equipment and people for this level of volume. It's dangerous
Speaker 2: and not sustainable. I spoke to five former embryologists who
Speaker 2: worked in the Atlantic Clinic. They all described the same
Speaker 2: crushing workload, the constant turnover, the feeling that it was
Speaker 2: only a matter of time before something went wrong, and
Speaker 2: then one day, in March of twenty twenty three, it did.
Speaker 2: Among the dozens of patient reviews and complaints I encountered
Speaker 2: while reporting this story, one stood out. A Google review
Speaker 2: that described a disappointing experience at the Atlantic Clinic. It
Speaker 2: was a devastating error, one that would reveal just how
Speaker 2: dangerous Kind Bodies staffing crime had become. Here's Vernita reading
Speaker 2: the review.
Speaker 8: She put, I recently had a very disappointing experience with
Speaker 8: Kind Body Fertility Clinic that I cannot in good conscience recommend. Unfortunately,
Speaker 8: they gave me the wrong measurement of medication during my treatment,
Speaker 8: which led to a lot of complications and stress. Despite
Speaker 8: all the issues, we were able to proceed with one
Speaker 8: embryo for transfer.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 8: On the day of the transfer, however, things went from
Speaker 8: bad to worse. The clinic staff were unable to identify,
Speaker 8: Oh my God, which embryo was ours because they had
Speaker 8: some unlabeled embryos in their storage. This was extremely frustrating
Speaker 8: and concerning, and left thus feeling very uncertain about the
Speaker 8: entire process.
Speaker 2: I spoke to four employees who were at the Atlanta
Speaker 2: location the day this review is about. None would speak
Speaker 2: on the record, fearing legal retaliation from Kind Body, but
Speaker 2: the patient herself agreed to talk with me when I
Speaker 2: traveled to Atlanta to investigate what happened. She asked not
Speaker 2: to be identified, explaining that as an immigrant in a
Speaker 2: tight knit religious community, even sharing her story could have
Speaker 2: serious consequences. A voice actor will read what she told me.
Speaker 9: We are religious people, and our community will avoid us
Speaker 9: if they hear about this.
Speaker 2: I'll call her Ayana. She was thirty nine years old
Speaker 2: when she walked into Kind Bodies Atlanta clinic that March morning,
Speaker 2: carrying with her three years of hope and heartbreak. She'd
Speaker 2: been through multiple egg retrievals, most unsuccessful. Out of the
Speaker 2: few eggs they'd managed to retrieve, only one had developed
Speaker 2: into a viable embryo. She was there that day for
Speaker 2: her transfer, the culmination of a fertility journey.
Speaker 9: That was our only opportunity.
Speaker 2: Instead, she and her husband spent three hours in a
Speaker 2: waiting room before learning what happened.
Speaker 9: On the transfer date. When we reached there at twelve,
Speaker 9: like midday, and they told us like about three o'clock,
Speaker 9: like they were like, I don't know how to say it.
Speaker 9: They were like messed up. They call everyone and like
Speaker 9: put us in one room and like, I don't know.
Speaker 9: They hold us like more than three hours.
Speaker 2: When the doctor finally came in to explain, Ayana could
Speaker 2: barely process the words.
Speaker 9: They just stand in front of me. I was crying.
Speaker 9: They told us they don't have the embryo.
Speaker 2: They're one embryo. Their only chance at having a child
Speaker 2: had been mislabeled. The clinic had an embryo, but they
Speaker 2: said they couldn't be sure it was a Yana's. The
Speaker 2: only way to confirm would be through genetic testing, a
Speaker 2: procedure that carried its own risks. Many patients choose to
Speaker 2: genetically test embryos before a transfer to make sure they
Speaker 2: have the correct number of chromosomes. It helps detect abnormalities
Speaker 2: that can result in serious genetic conditions that process, though
Speaker 2: it has its own risks. It involves taking a little
Speaker 2: piece of the embryo and can sometimes damage it. Some
Speaker 2: doctors recommend that patients who don't have a lot of
Speaker 2: embryos to work with skip such testing. Ayana and her
Speaker 2: husband had opted not to do genetic testing before, and
Speaker 2: they didn't want to do it now because of her
Speaker 2: religious beliefs. Ayana said she would have carried the baby
Speaker 2: even if they had detected an abnormality, but.
Speaker 9: They told us, we have one option, which is they
Speaker 9: need to test it to know if it is ours
Speaker 9: or not. The situation pushed us to do that.
Speaker 2: Despite her misgivings, she went ahead and got the test.
Speaker 2: A kind body doctor called and confirmed the embryo was
Speaker 2: indeed theirs, but revealed something else, an abnormality. Ayana said
Speaker 2: the doctor didn't tell her what the abnormality was and
Speaker 2: didn't explain the results. The doctor only told her that
Speaker 2: the embryo had to be discarded. Normally, when an embryo
Speaker 2: is genetically tested, patients get a copy of the report,
Speaker 2: and a doctor or a counselor walks a patient through
Speaker 2: what it means. But Ayana told me she and her
Speaker 2: husband weren't given any paperwork, and no one explained what
Speaker 2: the test had revealed about their last embryo. Many patients
Speaker 2: who go through IVF have a hard time knowing what
Speaker 2: to ask in these tense moments. For Ayana, she says
Speaker 2: the fact that English was not her first language made
Speaker 2: it even more difficult. Discarding an embryo was a big
Speaker 2: decision and went against Ayana's religious principles. She said she
Speaker 2: felt pushed into a decision she didn't want to make,
Speaker 2: but she also felt she didn't have any information to
Speaker 2: be able to push back. The doctor was apologetic and
Speaker 2: offered a free round of IVF.
Speaker 9: She told me, if you work with us, if you
Speaker 9: continue with us, we offer you another cycle. We will
Speaker 9: take care of everything.
Speaker 2: I talked to kind Body when I first learned of
Speaker 2: this incident. A spokeswoman said that kind Body bought a
Speaker 2: tracking system to try to minimize human errors. It's called
Speaker 2: electronic witnessing, and it gives each patience eggs, sperm, and
Speaker 2: embryos unique barcodes that must be scanned at every step.
Speaker 2: The software tracks who handles the materials and when requiring
Speaker 2: verification before allowing procedures to move forward. A Kind Body
Speaker 2: spokeswoman said at the time that this technology was used
Speaker 2: in ninety percent of its labs, and she says that
Speaker 2: now it's used in all of them, But former employees
Speaker 2: told me the problem was that they weren't properly trained
Speaker 2: on how to use it, something that Kind Body disputes.
Speaker 2: My story about lab errors at kind Body was published
Speaker 2: in October of twenty twenty three, two months after I
Speaker 2: spoke with Yana. In it, I wrote about what happened
Speaker 2: to Ayana, to Dina and b and to other patients.
Speaker 2: I'd learned of multiple incidents of embryos being mislabeled, lost,
Speaker 2: or accidentally destroyed at four different Kind Body clinics. After
Speaker 2: my article was published, Gina wrote a blog post in response.
Speaker 2: It said, in part quote, I'm proud that our doctors
Speaker 2: are candid and tell the patient the truth rather than
Speaker 2: hide any mistake made by a human in the lab.
Speaker 2: We also buy upsided the embryo to ensure its genetic material,
Speaker 2: and it came back and euploidy, which meant it was
Speaker 2: abnormal and would likely have not have been transferred anyway,
Speaker 2: So we didn't have to be honest, but we were.
Speaker 2: The outcome would have been the same an unsuccessful IVF cycle,
Speaker 2: which on fortunately happens about one third of the time,
Speaker 2: and even the best IVF clinics, including our own. But
Speaker 2: Ayana told me she felt robbed of the opportunity of
Speaker 2: at least trying to transfer the embryo as planned. When
Speaker 2: we spoke about six months after the error was discovered,
Speaker 2: she said it didn't matter if it had been abnormal,
Speaker 2: that God had gifted them that one embryo and it
Speaker 2: was their choice, their chance to take. On top of that,
Speaker 2: she had doubts about whether kind body was even telling
Speaker 2: the truth about the abnormality. She kept thinking why had
Speaker 2: they jumped to discard the embryo so quickly, Why wasn't
Speaker 2: she at least given the chance to transfer, And unlike
Speaker 2: other patients who might have sought legal recourse, she said
Speaker 2: she felt trapped by her circumstances.
Speaker 9: The situation. If it was different people like Americans, it
Speaker 9: was different. I think if it happened on you. For example,
Speaker 9: I think think it was like not this. Maybe you
Speaker 9: sue them, you do something. But I'm a foreigner and
Speaker 9: I'm religious, so my situation doesn't allow me to do anything.
Speaker 2: Ayana opted to do the free cycle kind Body offered,
Speaker 2: but it didn't yield any eggs. By that point, Ayana
Speaker 2: was forty. After six IVF cycles and tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars spent, she and her husband started looking into
Speaker 2: adoption instead. It's really hard to get a complete picture
Speaker 2: of what kind of errors may be happening in US
Speaker 2: fertility clinics, whether they're at kind Body or anyone else's.
Speaker 2: It's not an easy question to answer because, unlike other
Speaker 2: types of medical facilities, there is no regulation requiring fertility
Speaker 2: clinics to track lost, mishandled, or destroyed embryos, let alone
Speaker 2: report them to any public database. There's the Clinical Laboratory
Speaker 2: and Provement Amendments, also known as CLIA. It's a federal
Speaker 2: statute that regulates testing and oversees some aspects of an
Speaker 2: IVF clinic, like blood and semen testing. But crucially, CLIA
Speaker 2: does not oversee the embryology lab, where the most sensitive
Speaker 2: material is handled to fill the gap. Nonprofits and industry
Speaker 2: groups have stepped in. The big one is CAP, also
Speaker 2: known as the College of American Pathologists. CAP issues guidelines
Speaker 2: like how many people should be on staff or the
Speaker 2: optimal temperature for the lab. Clinics can get CAP accreditation
Speaker 2: if they adopt these measures, and getting the stamp of
Speaker 2: approval lends credibility, but that's really it. CAP cannot shut
Speaker 2: down a clinic if it finds it's not in compliance.
Speaker 2: In short, CAP has no teeth.
Speaker 10: There are guidelines, but there are no requirements.
Speaker 2: This is Evashennkman again. She's the embryologist who interviewed with
Speaker 2: kind Body back when the company was just starting out.
Speaker 2: He runs her own embryology school that trains young scientists
Speaker 2: who want to go into IVF, and she consults for
Speaker 2: clinics that want to open up labs of their own.
Speaker 10: Just like you can go to a department health website
Speaker 10: and look up physicians record, you can see how often
Speaker 10: they have malpractice claims. You don't have that for the laboratory.
Speaker 10: You don't know who that wizard is behind the curtain.
Speaker 10: Is that somebody you know who's been involved in several
Speaker 10: major mix up cases, and even if they're doing something egregious,
Speaker 10: there's no board that steps in and investigates. You know,
Speaker 10: maybe this person shouldn't be working in the lab anymore.
Speaker 10: Maybe we can do some retraining so that this mistake
Speaker 10: doesn't happen again. And that's the part that really started
Speaker 10: to make me angry.
Speaker 2: There is no requirement for fertility clinics to report incidents
Speaker 2: caused by human error or other preventable mistakes. By contrast,
Speaker 2: Eva points out that some countries in Europe have regulatory
Speaker 2: agencies that track mistakes.
Speaker 10: One of my colleagues there in Ireland sent me a
Speaker 10: text message a couple of weeks ago when we're talking
Speaker 10: about some of the issues here. She's like, you're really
Speaker 10: telling me that you don't have to report if there's
Speaker 10: a serious error in the lab, Like there's no proactive
Speaker 10: reporting where you get somebody that comes in and investigates you.
Speaker 10: I said, no, it is not, and that just blows
Speaker 10: their mind. It was really shocking to them, because what
Speaker 10: prevents you from making that error once a year, twice
Speaker 10: a year every other year. The vast majority of clinics
Speaker 10: do a very good job in providing great care to patients.
Speaker 10: But also how do we protect against the clinics that
Speaker 10: aren't following the rules or following the guidelines.
Speaker 2: Many of these errors are never known to people trying
Speaker 2: to decide which fertility clinic to go to. You can't
Speaker 2: google their error rates, and looking up a clinic's history
Speaker 2: of lawsuits may not be that revealing. Many errors never
Speaker 2: make it into the public record because patients sign arbitration
Speaker 2: agreements that prohibit them from speaking publicly about what happened
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 11: And what's that about. It's because fertility clinics operate in
Speaker 11: such a highly competitive space where a clinic never wants
Speaker 11: to be known as that entity that has dropped somebody's
Speaker 11: ex or embryos on the ground.
Speaker 2: Adam Wolf is a partner at Piferwolf, a law firm
Speaker 2: that specializes in fertility cases. Adam declined to say whether
Speaker 2: he had cases with kind Body, but he did talk
Speaker 2: about the kind of calls he gets all the time
Speaker 2: from patients of fertility clinics.
Speaker 11: We get calls from people who are just devastated by
Speaker 11: the results, usually the failures of their of the fertility
Speaker 11: work from their fertility clinic. And sometimes that is just
Speaker 11: the natural byproduct of fertility work. It's not always successful,
Speaker 11: even under the best of circumstances. But in many of
Speaker 11: the occasions where our potential clients call us, what we
Speaker 11: uncover is that the failure of a particular IVF cycle
Speaker 11: or other work in a fertility clinic is the result
Speaker 11: of misconduct or certain types of negligence.
Speaker 2: Adam has seen some of the worst mistakes in this
Speaker 2: field happen at all sorts of clinics. One of his
Speaker 2: clients discovered after she gave birth that the baby boy
Speaker 2: she had carried wasn't hers, and she was devastated when
Speaker 2: she had to turn the baby over to his biological parents.
Speaker 2: Another one of his clients alleged that their clinic let
Speaker 2: seven of their embryos dry out, destroying all of them.
Speaker 2: The couple sued the clinic, but then reached a settlement
Speaker 2: out of court. Adam says, the majority of incidents like
Speaker 2: these never become public because.
Speaker 11: We end up settling those cases with a confidentiality agreement
Speaker 11: that prohibits anybody from talking about that case or those
Speaker 11: errors publicly. Now, that makes a lot of sense for
Speaker 11: the fertility clinic which wants to hide its errors, but
Speaker 11: it creates a big public problem, which is that the
Speaker 11: public doesn't know about the vast majority of errors that
Speaker 11: we have seen in fertility clinics and that have caused
Speaker 11: our clients to suffer.
Speaker 2: Coming up on IVF disrupted the Kind Body story. With
Speaker 2: Kind Bodies cash reserves dwindling, the question arises, do its
Speaker 2: patients really need everything it's selling.
Speaker 4: At your white coat ceremony, which is the first thing
Speaker 4: you participate in before you start med school. You take
Speaker 4: that oath, and that oath is first, do no harm.
Speaker 12: My good friend who went through another clinic, she kept
Speaker 12: kind of mentioning like because I was like, so, did
Speaker 12: you pay for the extra however, couple hundred bucks for
Speaker 12: embryo glue? She was like embryo glue. Like I never
Speaker 12: heard of embryo glue. And I was like, oh, like,
Speaker 12: we just paid four hundred bucks this round for embryo glue.
Speaker 3: I just went through two weeks of medications and traveled
Speaker 3: here and spent thousands of dollars for this procedure, and
Speaker 3: you're telling me I didn't need to do it.
Speaker 4: I'm not a salesperson when it comes to medical care.
Speaker 2: IVF disrupted The Kind Body Story is reported and hosted
Speaker 2: by me Jackie Devalos. The series is produced by Sean
Speaker 2: Len and Jilda Decarly, editing by Caitlin Kenney, Jeff Grocott
Speaker 2: and Joshua Brustein. Blake Maples is our sound engineer. Voice
Speaker 2: acting in this episode was provided by Diana Johnston, Tina
Speaker 2: Marie Murray, and Rosanna Pilcher. Fact checking by Anica Robbins.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Senior Executive Editor for Technology is Tom Giles. Our
Speaker 2: head of podcasting is Sage Bauman. You can reach us
Speaker 2: at podcasts at Bloomberg dot net. IVF Disrupted is a
Speaker 2: production of Bloomberg and iHeart Podcasts S