Thursday morning after a hearing with officials Asuta’s Private Hospital In Tel Aviv’s Ramat HaHayal, the Ministry of Health ordered that its in-vitro fertilization unit should reduce its activity and that the hospital appoint a senior specialist from outside the medical center who would oversee the work being done, help update and implement procedures, and develop a culture of reporting and managing safety and unusual events at the hospital.
Dr. Hagar Mizrahi, head of the ministry’s medical division, who conducted an in-depth investigation into the hearings as well as embryo handover irregularities, examined the set of data, including administrative deficiencies in the area of treatment safety. He said the failure of the unit was due to poor organizational culture and high workload in the IVF unit.
Reducing activity at the unit includes a ban on carrying out more than 25 operations (egg extraction and embryo retrieval) in a working day until further notice; After the limit is reached, the reception of new patients in the unit should be stopped immediately.
In addition, unit work including laboratories must close their doors by 11 p.m.
A proposal has to be submitted for the appointment of an external supporter and a systematic plan for its activities has to be sent to the Ministry for review and approval. Mizrahi warned that failure to submit the resolution could lead to more serious measures.
In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of IVF treatments in privately owned medical institutions, which has increased the need to enhance and ensure the necessary mechanisms to maintain the quality and safety of treatments in this system, and especially issues in terms of working conditions, personnel conditions and ensuring proper infrastructure. IVF treatments, most of which are paid for by the four health funds, have provided private hospitals with considerable income.
Hospital mistakenly used wrong sperm and egg multiple times
A few months ago, a child conceived in an IVF unit was found in Ramat Hahayal not having a genetic link to his fatherRaising concerns that the hospital mixed sperm samples during the IVF procedure.
Asuta said she was contacted by a couple who had done IVF in 2018 and recently had genetic testing at a facility outside Israel. The test showed that there was, apparently, no genetic link between the child and the father, meaning that the sperm sample must have mixed with a different sperm sample.
The latest suspected case of IVF malpractice came nearly a year after a woman undergoing the procedure at another Asuta private IVF unit in Rishon LeZion was found to be carrying and giving birth to a child who was not her biological child . The woman who underwent risky surgery to save the baby girl, after which she also had to undergo surgery, is now raising the baby girl at home with her husband.
The ministry then investigated the scam and found that “economic thought Priority was given to the basic principles of maintaining the quality and safety of treatment.
The ministry also alleged that “this prioritization has turned the medical institution into an assembly line, derailed the train and caused pain and suffering not only to the patients who are in the first throes of the incident , but also to the community of patients and caregivers.” Asuta and in all IVF units in Israel.