THREE NEW CLINICS PLANNED IN 3-4 YEARS
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In an effort to make IVF more accessible, fertility clinic network Pozitivf says it will use $20 million it recently secured in funding led by MonCap to develop three new sites, build a training academy and improve its current systems.
Pozitivf, founded in late 2022, currently has one clinic and IVF lab in an 8,000-square space in San Antonio, Texas in addition to a satellite office in Brownsville, Texas. In 2023, they conducted roughly 350 IVF cycles, but the new funding will give them the ability to expand, according to Dr. Francisco Arredondo, Pozitivf's co-founder & CEO. The goal is to open three new clinics during the next three to four years within the “Texas Triangle,” a region made up of the state’s major cities — San Antonio, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston — that is home to nearly 70% of Texas’ population.
The company is also using the funds to address a major problem facing the fertility industry: a shortage of human capital. The team at Pozitivf created the andrology, embryology and nursing training program, IVF Academy USA, and has trained approximately four embryologists and andrologists every three to four months since June 2022 as well as three OBGYNs. Next year, it plans to train around 10 nurses, 10 nurse practitioners and 10 physician assistants. With the new funding, Pozitivf is building the physical academy in the 7,000-square feet below the clinic.
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“The idea is not to replace REIs with these other providers but to increase the capacity to make IVF more accessible geographically and financially,” Arredondo said.
Pozitivf is currently researching how to reduce variability and assessing what services do not add value. They say some add on tests haven’t been proven to be effective and some expensive filtering systems have not been proven by randomized controlled trials. The aim is to eliminate wasted inventory and inefficiency in their supply chain, Arredonodo said.
Focusing on long-term growth
Arredondo has expressed doubts about private equity’s role in medicine in the past. He said many firms are “obsessed with growth,” acquisitions and eliminating costs. That approach doesn’t work with the fertility industry, which is in its very early stages and only servicing around 20% of the women in the country who need IVF, he said. The cost of IVF continues to rise because a few companies dominate the market and there is a human capital shortage, so consolidation by private equity is not reducing costs, Arredondo added.
But MonCap is a venture capital firm whose investment strategy focuses on scalability, Arredondo said.
“One of the alignments that we had with MonCap was that we would not replicate things until we feel very confident that the processes have been documented… instead of replicating things that are not at an optimum place,” Arredondo said.
The $20 million funding round came amid a challenging time for raising capital, with venture funding falling in 2023 to its lowest level since 2017, according to research from market intelligence platform CB Insights. Moncap is also a primary investor of EngagedMD, which provides an admin software platform for caregivers in the fertility space.
Moncap’s managing partner, Jonathan Sockol, declined to comment on the firm’s investment strategy in the fertility sector at this time.
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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