‘Slow and clumsy’: Health Ministry report pans Tel Aviv hospital over IVF foul-ups
After fertilization debacle, inquiry finds Assuta Medical Center’s response ‘lacked professionalism,’ says Assuta tried to cover up incidents of drying of eggs
The Health Ministry has determined that a Tel Aviv medical center acted unprofessionally and tried to hide incidents of mistakes at its fertility clinic from authorities, including one in which a woman was impregnated with the wrong sperm and others in which women’s eggs were ruined, according to a scathing statement released Thursday.
The ministry published the conclusions of an inquiry into the Assuta Medical Center in Ramat Hachayal but did not release the panel’s full report. It did not immediately announce any actions it intended to take against the facility.
Last year, the ministry instructed Assuta in Ramat Hachayal to stop accepting new patients to its IVF clinic while it probed serious incidents involving the department. One case included two children born to a woman via in-vitro fertilization who were found to not be genetically linked to their father.
The inquiry report released this week found that in the case of the mistaken fertilization, Assuta staff responded “slowly and clumsily” once the error came to light. A procedure for dealing with such cases was not put into action, the case was not reported to the Health Ministry, and dealings with the couple “lacked sensitivity.”
When the couple demanded answers, the response from administrators and staff, who, the report said, felt they were being attacked, “lacked the required professionalism.”
The Health Ministry also criticized the medical center for initially dismissing the incident as not needing to be reported to the ministry.
The report came days after a court made a key ruling regarding another IVF foul-up, at Assuta Hospital in Rishon Lezion, deciding that a two-year-old girl’s genetic parents are her legal parents, and ordering that she be removed from the custody of the woman who birthed her and has raised her with her partner since.
There were no reports of legal applications to remove the two children mentioned in the Health Ministry report on the Tel Aviv facility from the parents who have raised them.
The Health Ministry’s inquiry was also prompted by an incident in which 13 fertilized eggs stored by the hospital accidentally dried up, forcing patients to undergo additional retrieval procedures.
The investigation found discrepancies between the text of an internal investigation into the matter and the version sent to the ministry, noting that the latter did not mention “the workload, the delays, the long work hours of the embryologists, and warnings the lab gave administration about this matter.”
The report said it concluded that a “bad faith” attempt was made “to hide essential and important facts from the Health Ministry.”
Assuta responded in a statement that it “takes seriously the conclusions of the Health Ministry’s inquiry committee” and was committed to “full transparency and to correct the faults that were found.”
Regarding the case of the erroneous fertilization, Assuta said that “it fully cooperated with the Health Ministry and the inquiry committee.” It said that a “thorough internal review was carried out” over the matter, including the implementation of strict procedures and the installation of “some of the newest and most advanced technology in the world to improve safety.”
In addition, “we switched and added professionals,” the medical center said, without offering specifics.
As for the dried eggs, Assuta said this was a known issue but that it had clarified procedures and “bolstered the internal monitoring systems.”
“The lessons learned have already been broadly applied,” it said, noting that a recent Health Ministry monitoring report had confirmed that “safety and quality are among the core elements of the organization” and that they had addressed previous faults.
A Health Ministry probe into the Ramat Hachayal IVF mixup, published in March 2023, also pointed to significant breaches in protocol due to heavy workload resulting in the embryo mix-up.
