Physicians may later be named in suit, lawyer says
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BY RON SHINKMAN
A referring fertility physician and an employee are what led Ovation Fertility in part to face four separate lawsuits alleging it negligently killed embryos by exposing them to hydrogen peroxide.
According to one lawsuit, Terence Lee, M.D., an Ovation referring physician who is medical director of Fertility Care of Orange County, notified his patients that his recent patients suddenly had a zero IVF success rate. Lee and other physicians who work with Ovation pressed the company to conduct an investigation, according to the lawsuit. Although Lee is mentioned in the lawsuit, he is neither a plaintiff nor defendant in the case.
The lawsuits were filed in Orange County, Calif. Superior Court in late April. Seventeen different plaintiffs – most of whom are only referred to by their initials – accused Ovation’s laboratory in Newport Beach, Calif. of “killing” their embryos last January by exposing them to hydrogen peroxide during the thawing process and then failing to tell them about it.
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Also named in the lawsuits were FPG Services, LLC, FPG Labs LLC and Newport Beach IVF, LLC. Corporate records indicate they are all Ovation subsidiaries. The lawsuits state they all do business under the Ovation name.
Lee is one of 39 doctors listed as “partner physicians” on Ovation’s website.
An Ovation spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on Ovation’s corporate structure.
According to Robert Marcereau, a Dana Point, Calif.-based attorney representing eight of the plaintiffs, Ovation’s physicians are either given an ownership interest in Ovation, or are paid financial incentives to make referrals to its laboratories.
No physicians are currently named as defendants in the lawsuits, but that may change, according to Marcereau.
“Were these doctors being forthright with their patients once they learned of what happened?” he asked. “Because a lot of these doctors were very slow to provide information to their patients and were not in my opinion forthcoming. That's something that's going to have to be explored.”
Marcereau said his firm was contacted by an Ovation employee at the Newport Beach lab. That employee made allegations of poor work being performed by embryologists, which was attributed in part to lax training provided by Ovation. Similar allegations were made in another of the four lawsuits.
Although Marcereau declined to name the whistleblower, the suit his firm filed mentioned an Ovation embryologist by name. It referred to her as an “unqualified and inexperienced employee” whose errors – along with others allegedly committed by Ovation staff – regularly killed embryos.
Ovation’s official statement on the incident appears to confirm at least a portion of Marcereau’s allegations. “This was an isolated incident related to an unintended laboratory technician error that impacted a very small number of patients,” Ovation said. “As soon as we recognized that pregnancy numbers were lower than our usually high success rates, we immediately initiated an investigation.”
However, Ovation did deny one of the primary accusations in the lawsuits: That embryos were implanted in patients even after the company was aware they were non-viable.
“We have been in close contact with these few impacted patients since the issue was discovered,” Ovation’s statement concluded. “We are grateful for the opportunity to help patients build a family and will continue to implement and enforce rigorous protocols to safeguard that process.”
The content and themes expressed within the article are that of the news. The advertiser does not have editorial control over the content of this article, and Inside Reproductive Health maintains full editorial independence. The views and opinions expressed in this article do not represent the views of the Advertiser or of Inside Reproductive Health.
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