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The Atlantic-area clinic and 32 others across the country are owned by Kindbody, a five-year-old startup founded by Gina Bartasi. She’s a well-known figure in the fertility world whose reputation and millennial-friendly marketing has attracted hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars to Kindbody, as well as celebrity investors including Gwyneth Paltrow, Chelsea Clinton and Gabrielle Union.
“IVF can be a risky business and accidents happen,” said Mina Alikani, an embryologist and consultant to providers setting up IVF labs. But the frequency of mishaps at the startup, as described to her by Bloomberg, are “concerning,” she said. No IVF cycle is without risk: Significant incidents, like the mishandling of eggs or embryos that results in the loss or significant compromise of a cycle, occur once every 2,156 cycles, according to the 2018 Boston IVF study, which tracked one of its own laboratories over 12 years. Moderate problems, which might reduce the chance of success for a cycle, happened once every 555 cycles.
That same year, the Bryant Park clinic accidentally destroyed at least two other embryos, one current and two former employees said. One was dropped on the ground. Another, a patient’s last embryo, was damaged after accidentally being left out at room temperature. The woman was given unlimited free IVF to make up for the mistake, but didn’t conceive and ultimately stopped treatment at Kindbody, according to two senior employees who are still at the company.
The company got its start offering free hormone tests and consultations in yellow buses across San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and the Hamptons. When it opened brick-and-mortar clinics, they were outfitted with warm tones, fresh flower arrangements and gallery walls of abstract art depicting the female body. It hired executives from Equinox, OneMedical and Oscar Health.
Kindbody said that by building and operating its own clinics and labs, it could offer employers fertility services for their staff at 30% cheaper than competitors. But running those labs at the level needed to safely handle embryos has proved difficult in some instances, many of the former and current employees said.
Nurses, medical assistants and lab staff also were sometimes too overwhelmed with day-to-day work to write up detailed accounts of any errors, a dozen current and former employees, including Pearsall, said. Unlike most competitors, Kindbody operates its own embryology labs, controlling variables such as temperature, humidity and air flow. Air quality is especially critical because contaminants such as perfume or rubbing alcohol can affect an embryo’s quality, according to Alikani, the embryologist. The ASRM’s practice guidelines recommend “dedicated clean air into the laboratory...to limit particles, volatile organic compounds, and inorganic air pollutants.
Trying to meld the different cultures of the companies was difficult, according to two current and more than a dozen former employees. The incident raised alarm among staff, who grew worried about the impact the acquisition was having on patients. They questioned how the company could continue to expand when, in their view, its busiest clinic was buckling under pressure, six current and former employees said.
Meanwhile, some older clinics, like the one in Atlanta, are still losing money, according to two people familiar with the company’s financial position. A spokeswoman for Kindbody said that rising operational costs and inflation had affected profitability.