A second Australian IVF mix-up shakes clinic and industry
June 10 (Reuters) - One of Australia's top IVF providers mistakenly implanted a patient with her own embryo instead of her partner's in a second fertility clinic mix-up, heightening concerns about an industry that did not have much active government oversight until recently.
Monash IVF (MVF.AX), opens new tab said the error took place on June 5 at a clinic in Melbourne but did not provide further details such as how it learned of the bungle or what the couple planned to do next. The company said it was supporting the couple, who it did not identify.
It said the patient's embryo was mistakenly implanted under a treatment plan which called for an embryo from the patient's partner to be transferred.
The incident builds on a reputational maelstrom for Monash IVF which was already reeling from an April disclosure that an Australian woman had given birth to a stranger's baby after a fertility doctor accidentally implanted the wrong embryo to a patient in Brisbane in 2023.
That mix-up sparked concerns about security protocols at IVF clinics and an industry which is only now in the process of being more regulated.
Monash claimed the world's first IVF pregnancy five decades ago and is Australia's second-largest IVF provider, carrying out nearly a quarter of the country's 100,000 assisted reproductive cycles a year, according to industry data.
"This mix-up, the second reported incident at Monash IVF, risks shaking confidence not just in one provider but across the entire fertility sector," Hilary Bowman-Smart, a researcher and bioethicist at the University of South Australia.
Shares of Monash IVF were down 24% by midsession on Tuesday, against a rising broader market (.AXJO), opens new tab. The stock is just over half its value before the April announcement.
"We had thought the Brisbane clinic embryo transfer error was an isolated incident," Craig Wong-Pan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a client note.
"We believe there is now risk of a greater impact of reputational damage and market share losses to MVF's operations."
Monash IVF had already hired a lawyer to run an independent investigation after the Brisbane incident, and said on Tuesday it has extended the scope of that investigation. It added that it was installing interim extra verification safeguards to ensure patient confidence.
"Whilst industry-leading electronic witness systems ... are being rolled out across Monash IVF, there remains instances and circumstances whereby manual witnessing is required," the company said.
It said it had reported the Melbourne incident to state regulator the Victorian Department of Health and industry licencing body the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee (RTAC), part of industry group the Fertility Society of Australia.
The health department and RTAC were not immediately available for comment.
Reports of transferring a wrong embryo are rare, according to fertility experts, and Monash's Brisbane mix-up was widely reported as the first known case of its kind.
($1 = 1.5330 Australian dollars)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
TB: India brought forward its tuberculosis elimination deadline - but can it meet it?
Atul Kumar (name changed) anxiously paced the corridor of a public hospital in India's capital Delhi.A small-appliance mechanic, he was struggling to secure medicines for his 26-year-old daughter who suffers from drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Mr Kumar said his daughter needed 22 tablets of Monopas, an antibiotic used for treating TB, every day. "In the past 18 months, I haven't received government-supplied medicine for even two full months," he told BBC Hindi in January, months before India's declared deadline to eliminate the infectious to buy costly drugs from private pharmacies, Mr Kumar was drowning in debt. A week's supply cost 1,400 rupees ($16; £12), more than half his weekly income. After the BBC raised the issue, authorities supplied the medicines Mr Kumar's daughter needed. Federal Health Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava said that the government usually acts quickly to fix medicine access issues when Kumar's daughter is one of millions of Indians suffering from tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that infects the lungs and is spread when the infected person coughs or home to 27% of the world's tuberculosis cases, sees two TB-related deaths every three minutes. India's TB burden has long been tied to poor case detection, underfunding and erratic drug this grim reality, the country has set an ambitious goal. It aims to eliminate TB by the end of 2025, five years ahead of the global target set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations member as defined by the WHO, means cutting new TB cases by 80% and deaths by 90% compared with 2015 visits to TB centres in Delhi and the eastern state of Odisha revealed troubling gaps in the government's TB Odisha's Khordha district, around 30km (18.6 miles) from state capital Bhubaneshwar, 32-year-old day-labourer Kanhucharan Sahu is struggling to continue his two-year-old daughter's TB treatment, with government medicines unavailable for three months and private ones costing 1,500 rupees a month - an unbearable burden."We can't see her suffer anymore," he says, his voice breaking. "We even thought of abandoning her."At Odisha's local TB office, officials promised to review Sahu's case, but a staffer admitted, "We rarely get the medicines we need, so we ration them." Mr Sahu says he hasn't received the promised 1,000 rupees monthly support from the federal government and at the local TB office, officials admit to chronic shortages, leaving families like his adrift in a failing Routray, who runs the patient support group Sahyog, says medicine shortages are now routine, with government outlets often running dry. "How can we talk about ending TB with such gaps?" she are other hurdles too - for example, changing treatment centres involves navigating complex bureaucracy, a barrier that often leads to missed doses and incomplete care. This poses a major hurdle for India's vast population of migrant a hospital near Khordha, 50-year-old Babu Nayak, a sweeper who was diagnosed with TB in 2023, struggles to continue his treatment. He was regularly forced to travel 100km to his village for medicines as officials insisted he collect them from the original centre where he was diagnosed and first treated. "It became too difficult," he to travel so often, Mr Nayak stopped taking the medication altogether."It was a mistake," he admitted, after contracting TB again last year and being his hospital, no TB specialist was available, highlighting another critical gap in India's fight: a shortage of frontline health BBC shared its findings with the federal health ministry and officials in charge of the TB programme in Delhi and Odisha. There was no response despite repeated reminders.A 2023 parliamentary report showed there were many vacant roles across all levels of the TB programme, affecting diagnosis, treatment and follow-up - especially in rural and underserved vaccines help India triumph over tuberculosis?In 2018, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought forward India's TB elimination target to 2025, he cited the government's intensified efforts as a reason for optimism. Two years later, the Covid pandemic disrupted TB elimination efforts globally, delaying diagnosis, diverting resources and pausing routine services. Medicine shortages, staff constraints and weakened patient monitoring have further widened the gap between ambition and these challenges, India has made some the past decade, the country has reduced its tuberculosis-related mortality. Between 2015 and 2023, TB deaths declined from 28 to 22 per 100,000 people. This figure, however, is still high when compared with the global average which stands at number of reported cases has gone up, which the government credits to its targeted outreach and screening programmes. In 2024, India recorded 2.6 million TB cases, up from 2.5 million in 2023. Federal Health Minister JP Nadda recently touted innovations like handheld X-ray devices as game-changers in expanding testing. But on the ground, the picture is less optimistic."I still see some patients come to me with reports of sputum (phlegm) smear microscopy for TB, a test which has a much lower detection rate as compared to genetic tests," says Dr Lancelot Pinto, a Mumbai-based tests, which includes RT-PCR machines - widely used to diagnose HIV, influenza and most recently, Covid-19 - and Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing, also examine the sputum sample but with greater sensitivity and in a shorter the tests can reveal whether the TB strain is drug-resistant or sensitive, something that microscopic testing can't do, Dr Pinto gap, he adds, stems not just from lack of awareness but from limited access to modern tests."Genetic testing is free at government hospitals but not uniformly available, with only a few states being able to provide it."In May, Modi led a high-level review of India's TB elimination programme, reaffirming the country's commitment to defeating the the official statement notably skipped mention of the 2025 deadline. Instead, it highlighted community-driven strategies - better sanitation, nutrition and social support for TB-affected families - as key to the government has also prioritised better diagnosis, treatment and prevention at the core of its elimination approach mirrors the WHO's view of TB as a "disease of poverty". In its 2024 report, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it "the definitive disease of deprivation", noting how poverty, malnutrition and treatment costs trap patients in a vicious cycle. As India pushes toward its goal of eliminating the disease, deep health and social inequalities remain just six months left until India's self-imposed deadline, new complications have fallout from US President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the WHO and suspension of USAID operations has raised concerns about future funding for global TB efforts. Since 1998, USAID has invested more than $140m to help diagnose and treat TB patients in India. However, India's federal health secretary insists there is "no budgetary problem" hope lies on the horizon. Sixteen TB vaccine candidates are currently in development across the world, with the WHO projecting potential availability within five years, pending successful trials.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
UnitedHealth faces federal scrutiny into whistleblower claims
US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are raising concerns and seeking investigations in the wake of Guardian reporting on whistleblower claims about practices within UnitedHealth Group's nursing home partnership programs. One US senator has announced he is launching an investigation and two US representatives are now calling on the US Department of Justice to expand its reported investigations of the nation's largest healthcare conglomerate. Others said they are troubled by whistleblower allegations reported by the Guardian – including claims that UnitedHealth paid bonuses to nursing homes to help reduce residents' hospital transfers and used improper sales tactics to get nursing home residents to sign up for the company's Medicare Advantage plans. Two Democratic members of Congress – representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Lloyd Doggett of Texas – filed a letter on Monday that urges the Department of Justice to 'thoroughly review new revelations from investigative reporting and whistleblower complaints, which suggest that UnitedHealth may have engaged in illegal activities'. 'The Guardian's findings reveal the need for a wide-ranging investigation by the Department of Justice into years, if not decades, of potential waste, fraud, and abuse at UnitedHealth,' the letter read. The lawmakers are demanding a briefing on current and planned investigations by 14 July. UnitedHealth vigorously denies the whistleblowers' allegations and says the Guardian's reporting on these issues is 'blatantly false and misleading'. In response to a question about the two representatives' letter, the company said the Department of Justice 'has already declined to pursue the matter' – a reference to the agency's previous decisions not to intervene in two whistleblower lawsuits against UnitedHealth filed under the US False Claims Act. One of those lawsuits was ultimately dropped and the other is pending in federal court in Georgia. Another Democrat, the Oregon senator Ron Wyden, announced last month on X that his office was 'launching a full investigation to verify these whistleblower accounts'. 'This reporting demands further inquiry – nobody deserves to have their medical care jeopardized to pad insurance company profits,' Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate's finance committee, said. 'My staff on the Finance Committee have a decade-long record of thorough and objective investigations that follow the facts towards solutions that improve federal health care policy for all Americans.' Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who sits on the Senate investigations subcommittee, said it is 'alarming to hear these serious allegations' about the company's practices. 'I look forward to securing justice for patients, policyholders and whistleblowers alike who've been harmed by insurance companies.' Another Republican, Georgia representative Buddy Carter, expressed similar concerns. 'If these allegations are true, UnitedHealth must be held responsible for their gross abuse of patients,' Carter, chair of the House subcommittee on health, said in a statement. 'Patients should always come before profits.' Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, ranking member of the Senate investigations subcommittee, said the 'courage and conviction' of the whistleblowers will serve as 'an impetus for reform. Shining a light on abuses of consumer trust is a call to action – and a demand for accountability.' UnitedHealth says its partnerships with nursing homes ensure better care for seniors 'through on-site clinical care, personalized treatment plans, and enhanced coordination among caregivers'. The company says these arrangements have been highly successful in helping nursing homes prevent unnecessary hospital stays that can lead to serious issues such as delirium, falls, pressure injuries and 'sometimes even fatal consequences'. Two whistleblowers who worked for UnitedHealth as nurse practitioners submitted sworn declarations in May alleging that the company had used improper tactics to reduce hospital transfers for ailing nursing home residents. Their declarations were submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Washington state attorney general's office and Congress, according to Whistleblower Aid, the non-profit assisting both nurse practitioners. Whistleblower Maxwell Ollivant's declaration, first reported on by the Guardian in May, says he witnessed UnitedHealth 'delay and deny medically necessary emergency care' to vulnerable nursing home residents in order to 'retain more money' from the payments that the company was receiving from the US government's Medicare Advantage program. Under Medicare Advantage, a private alternative to traditional Medicare, the federal government pays insurers a fixed sum to cover seniors' medical services. The less insurers spend on covering medical expenses, the more in public dollars they have left over. Ollivant's declaration alleges that UnitedHealth 'actively avoided medically necessary hospitalizations – hospitalizations in serious life-threatening situations, or situations to avoid imminent death or incredibly catastrophic results – to keep their costs down, and drove vulnerable patients toward signing Do Not Resuscitate (DNRs) and Do Not Hospitalize orders to avoid providing hospital services for life threatening illnesses'. UnitedHealth noted that the Department of Justice declined to join the lawsuit that Ollivant filed against the company and later dropped. The company said Ollivant 'is not in a position to assess the effectiveness of our programs – he lacks both the necessary data and the expertise'. The second whistleblower, whose declaration was filed anonymously, worked with UnitedHealth for several years. Her declaration says her experiences as a nurse practitioner within its nursing home programs gave her 'first-hand insight into the evolution and impact of substandard care practices resulting from the training, culture, processes and bonus system of delays and denials of medically necessary care'. That declaration criticizes the company's '[a]ggressive [p]ush for DNRs' and says 'the decision to receive life-saving care should rest with the patient or their legal representative, not myself, and certainly not the insurance company'. UnitedHealth said the allegations in the anonymous whistleblower's declaration show she 'did not fully understand our clinical model' and that her perspective 'does not reflect the dedication and excellence of the many outstanding clinicians who understand the impact they have in supporting their patients and improving health outcomes'. The company also denies the claims regarding DNRs. 'At no time have we encouraged or pushed' nursing home residents 'to sign a DNR directive', a UnitedHealth representative said. 'Our health care providers are ethically bound to respect patient autonomy and support informed decision-making without coercion.' The Guardian's previous reporting also references allegations relating to the legal claims of a third whistleblower, Brook Gonite, a former salesperson for UnitedHealth's nursing home program. Gonite alleges in a lawsuit in federal court in Georgia that UnitedHealth wrongly solicited and enrolled vulnerable, elderly patients for its nursing home programs through improper marketing tactics, including violations of Hipaa, the federal medical privacy act, and paid kickbacks to nursing homes to obtain illegal referrals of their residents. UnitedHealth denied those allegations and moved to dismiss Gonite's lawsuit. The Department of Justice, which declined to formally intervene in the case, opposed UnitedHealth's motion to dismiss. In April, federal judge Marc Treadwell denied UnitedHealth's motion to dismiss, finding that Gonite's lawsuit puts forth 'substantial and concerning' factual allegations that 'plausibly' assert violations of federal protections meant to ensure vulnerable nursing home residents can make informed decisions about their medical care. The company continues to deny those claims and says Gonite was fired for engaging in illegal sales tactics similar to those alleged in his suit. In a statement, the company said its employees 'are trained on compliant interactions with nursing home staff and nursing home residents, in accordance with the Medicare Marketing Guidelines and other applicable laws'. Last week, shortly before the Guardian was to publish a second story providing additional detail about Gonite's pending lawsuit and the other two whistleblowers' declarations, UnitedHealth filed a lawsuit against the Guardian in Delaware state court, claiming the allegations were false and libelous. In a statement, the company said 'the article published by The Guardian is not only riddled with inaccuracies – it is so blatantly false and misleading that we have filed a defamation lawsuit to hold the publication accountable and bring the full truth to light'. The Guardian has said it stands by its 'deeply sourced, independent reporting, which is based on thousands of corporate and patient records, publicly filed lawsuits, declarations submitted to federal and state agencies, and interviews with more than 20 current and former UnitedHealth employees – as well as statements and information provided by UnitedHealth itself over several weeks'.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
NHS ‘won't hit waiting list target' despite budget boost
The NHS will not come close to hitting Sir Keir Starmer's waiting list target despite receiving a budget boost of about £30 billion on Wednesday, official modelling shows. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, will promise the health service an annual real terms increase of 2.8 per cent as she uses her spending review to stake Labour's re-election pledge on improving the NHS and growing the economy. Starmer's central promise on the NHS is to hit a routine operations target of treating 92 per cent of patients within 18 weeks, a goal that has not been met for a decade. But The Times understands that internal Department of Health modelling shows that the NHS is on course to hit only about 80 per cent by the end of the parliament. Officials say the figures can only come close to 92 per cent by using 'implausible' and 'over-optimistic' assumptions. Reeves will promise to 'invest [in] our country's security, health and economy' as she uses looser fiscal rules to channel £113 billion in extra infrastructure spending towards projects to spur growth. This will include a promise of £3.9 billion a year on a decade-long programme to double council house-building, as well as more than £16 billion on nuclear power and more than £20 billion for local road, rail and tram projects. Insisting that she is 'renewing Britain', Reeves will acknowledge: 'I know too many people in too many parts of the country are yet to feel it. This government's task — my task — and the purpose of this spending review — is to change that.' Her promise comes as official figures showed employment in the UK fell last month at the quickest pace since the pandemic. Data from HM Revenue & Customs showed that the number of payroll employees fell by just over 109,000 in May, the largest monthly decline since May 2020. After Starmer set out plans last week to spend 3 per cent of GDP on defence, the centrepiece of Labour's promise on public services will be annual increases to health spending that will total a budget boost of about £30 billion a year by the end of the parliament. The decision will force some real term cuts to other departments but a lower increase for health than some were expecting has allowed Reeves to avoid deeper cuts in politically sensitive areas such as the police. A 2.8 per cent annual increase is below the 3.6 per cent rises the NHS has averaged over decades and which formed the basis for the health service's workforce plan, leading to widespread unease among health chiefs about whether it is enough to deliver key pledges. The health service will also have to find the lion's share of a £1 billion-a-year rise in drug prices ministers have promised to the pharmaceutical industry, raising fears that much of the increase will be swallowed up in higher costs and staff pay, as unions threaten another campaign of strikes. Currently the NHS is treating only 60 per cent of routine conditions within 18 weeks and many health chiefs believe they are off track even to hit an interim target of 65 per cent by March. The waiting list is 7.4 million and NHS England says it it will need to fall below 4 million to hit Starmer's target. This will require average monthly falls of more than 70,000, almost tripling the rate achieved since Labour took power. Officials say modelling can only show performance reaching 92 per cent by March 2029 through making a series of assumptions that are not internally seen as credible. As well as more efficient care, models show the waiting list falling faster if fewer patients are referred for treatment, there are more straightforward cases, follow-up appointments are discouraged and patients are removed from waiting lists where they are deemed no longer to need care. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, argues that a ten-year plan due next month will improve efficiency and allow the NHS to intensify efforts to cut waiting lists, and has insisted the target is feasible. 'Despite everything Wes has said, there are still people who haven't got the message: it is neither affordable nor desirable to turn the NHS around through money alone,' a government source said. 'It is the combination of the investment Rachel is making, and the reform Wes has embarked on, that will deliver on the government's plan for change to cut waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks. We have never said that this will be achieved by just spending more money.' Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, will warn ministers not to 'demand the impossible' of the health service as he hosts Streeting at his annual conference on Thursday. While welcoming a 2.8 per cent increase, Taylor said: 'There are fears that this uplift will not be enough to achieve all the government's manifesto pledges, including hitting the stretching 92 per cent 18 weeks elective waiting time target by March 2029.' While insisting hospitals and other services were prioritising waiting lists, Taylor said: 'Many of our members have voiced concerns about hitting the interim target, with only 50 per cent confident they will achieve the 65 per cent elective care target by March 2026.' Sally Gainsbury, of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said that 'an extra 2.8 per cent in real terms will not fully cover the new demands the health service can expect each year, let alone eliminate previous problems like the waiting list backlog'. She warned that while 'the increase expected in the spending review is a lot of money by anyone's standards', the NHS was already struggling with deficits and the extra cost of medicines. 'Even if it outstrips the most optimistic assumptions, the health service won't hit the 92 per cent waiting times target unless it cuts back on other goals we have been promised,' she said. The Department of Health said: 'We continue to make strong progress towards delivering the 18-week standard, and are confident we will hit it by the end of the parliament through our Plan for Change. We have exceeded our pledge to deliver two million extra operations, scans and appointments, with 3.6 million additional appointments delivered, cutting waiting lists by 200,000 already.'
