VC-backed fertility clinic has history of lost embryos, mistreated patients, lawsuits say

Something felt off about Spring Fertility when Amy Shu Chang showed up for her second embryo transfer. Instead of the usual soft music playing in the background, the San Francisco clinic was eerily quiet. Instead of the usual staff, “the B Team” was there that day, Dr. Nam Tran, the chief medical officer, allegedly explained. 

Chang grew increasingly uneasy when Tran struggled to insert a catheter into her urethra and left her on the exam table for more than 15 minutes with her legs splayed open and a speculum in her vagina, she said. 

Then came the bad news, and all-out panic. 

Somehow, Chang’s two embryos had been lost, the doctor allegedly told her. Tran admonished her not to worry, that the “next round is on us,” she recalled. 

Then, she said, he left the room.

Chang is not the only patient to feel wronged by Spring Fertility. The multistate chain of clinics — bankrolled by venture capital investors who also fund sports gambling and cryptocurrency enterprises — faces several lawsuits alleging negligence, property damage, wage theft, and privacy violations. Staffers report an environment where care is subordinated to profit.

The allegations aren’t unique to Spring Fertility. As more private investment dollars pour into fertility treatment startups, patient advocates say, the commoditization of in vitro fertilization puts people desperate to start families at risk of immense personal loss with little recourse.

The allegations about Chang’s unsettling appointment on May 22, 2024 — detailed in one of two new lawsuits against Spring Fertility’s Bay Area clinics — come amid a national wave of litigation targeting clinics and companies involved in the fertility process as the industry’s growth outpaces regulation.

An NBC analysis identified more than 300 such cases in the past five years. A 2023 study published in the Georgetown Law Journal, meanwhile, identified nearly 1,500 cases related to reproductive loss over the past four decades — 158 which resulted in jury awards, with judgments ranging from less than six figures to upward of $10 million. 

The number of births involving reproductive technology jumped more than fourfold from 1996 to 2022, according to the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology. Fertility procedures during the same period grew sixfold.

California is on the cusp of rapid industry expansion, as a new law goes into effect this summer that will require large healthcare insurance plans to cover fertility services. The overall U.S. fertility market — encompassing IVF, tissue storage, genetic testing, and donor services — is projected to grow from $10 billion to nearly $17 billion by 2028 because of increased demand and technological advancements. 

But IVF isn’t covered by the same laws that hold providers of other medical procedures accountable. Unlike blood banks, for example, embryology labs are inspected by private accreditation organizations, rather than the federal government. And while California is among more than half of U.S. states that require hospitals to report avoidable medical errors, those standards don’t apply to fertility clinics.

Because of the lack of oversight, there’s no way to know how often IVF-related mistakes occur. And because of the lack of industry-specific laws, courts tend to treat IVF-related loss more like a hapless accident than a violation of patient care.

“These are harms that are real and meaningful and significant,” said Dov Fox, who heads the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics at the UC San Diego School of Law. “And when misconduct is responsible, people ought to have a way to bring actions in court and seek relief.”

There just aren’t many ways to do that.

Since IVF loss doesn’t necessarily result in physical harm, Fox says, patients can’t sue for medical malpractice. And since fertility clinics don’t promise results, patients have a tough time claiming a practitioner breached a contract. So patients who suffer reproductive loss tend to file negligence or property damage claims. If there’s a device failure — like when a storage tank broke at San Francisco’s Pacific Fertility Center in 2018, destroying about 2,500 eggs and 1,500 embryos — plaintiffs can file claims based on manufacturing defects. 

But equating reproductive loss to a property or contract issue doesn’t reflect the profound impact it can have on patients, Fox said.

“These courts miss the centrality of wanted procreation and the magnitude of its deprivation,” he wrote in a 2019 study on the limitations of civil recourse. “It can be hard to define the sense of emptiness and alienation victims face.”

To remedy the disconnect, he proposes creating three categories of tort law: procreation imposed, procreation confounded, and — for cases like Chang’s and at least one other Spring Fertility client — procreation deprived.

The second suit filed in recent weeks against Spring Fertility was brought by a couple referred to as J.W. and M.W. It claims that clinic staff told them at a July 16, 2024, appointment that a pair of embryos from their latest retrieval had to be discarded because of a “contaminated container.”

“J.W. and her husband were devastated,” the lawsuit says. “They demanded to speak with Dr. Tran to discuss how an inexcusable failure like this could have possibly occurred.” Instead, the suit says, the doctor ignored them for more than a month. 

Tran and other representatives for Spring Fertility did not respond to interview requests. A spokesperson defended the company and denied the allegations in the lawsuits.

“To protect patient privacy we cannot discuss specific cases,” Spring Fertility VP of Marketing Megan Dwyer said, “but we want to be clear: the allegations in this lawsuit are inaccurate and misrepresent the facts.” 

In another lawsuit, filed in July 2023, Angela and Amanda Alexander accused Spring Fertility of mixing up their embryos a year prior. Though Angela got pregnant, she had a miscarriage. Months later, per the couple’s lawsuit, they learned that the clinic had used Amanda’s last remaining embryo instead of one of Angela’s, as instructed.  

“After preparing for a successful pregnancy, going through necessary medical and other procedures in order to prepare to carry their own biological children, they learned of the loss of Amanda’s final embryo and Angela’s unnecessary pain from carrying Amanda’s embryo,” their lawsuit states.

Nearly five decades after the world’s first IVF birth, what started as a mostly academic medical specialty has become big business. As fertility shifts from public universities to private enterprise, it’s susceptible to the same risks as other commercialized medical services. 

“Large chains are expected to respond to investors, understandably, seeking returns on their investments,” reads a 2022 study in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics. “Profits, and not patients, emerge as a principal priority, often pushing aside important cycle outcomes and patient satisfaction.”

The complaints by Chang and the unnamed couple describe how Spring Fertility is owned by an investment group called Wildcat Capital Management, which funds a wide range of ventures, including sports gambling site DraftKings, the Robinhood trading platform, and a company that invests in practices that provide Botox and other aesthetic services. (A representative for Spring disputes the litigants’ ownership claim, saying that “Spring is controlled and majority owned by its physician partners — not Wildcat.”)

“Put simply … in an effort to cut corners and increase profits at the direction of its venture capital investors, Spring Fertility failed to sufficiently staff its facilities, failed to adequately train and supervise its personnel, and accepted far too many customers than they could reasonably and safely accommodate,” Chang’s lawsuit states. 

As a result, the lawsuits allege, patients have suffered devastating consequences. 

Tran and Dr. Peter Klatsky founded Spring Fertility in 2016. It markets itself as an industry leader, with exceptional live birth rates and patent-pending technological innovations. One of the fastest-growing U.S. fertility companies, Spring also boasts being the first with a lab that “replicates the atmospheric composition of a woman’s fallopian tubes through each stage of IVF.” 

For all its growth and innovation, however, the company has been plagued by criticism from former patients and employees — including one who filed a lawsuit alleging rampant wage theft. Online reviews about Spring Fertility cite complaints ranging from a lack of communication to depleted life savings to what, under stricter regulations, might amount to medical malpractice. 

“Worst fertility clinic,” a Yelp reviewer called Jenny C. wrote in 2022. “Dr. Tran made me feel hopeless after multiple rounds of IVF and told me that I had premature ovarian aging?!?! I’m 31 years old. … I spent over $85,000 at Spring Fertility and got nothing!” Jenny C. wrote that out of desperation, she went to another clinic and got three healthy embryos on the first try.

Another Yelper, Julia W., wrote that  Spring Fertility gave her “faulty” medication in March 2024 and went radio silent when she asked for help about how to deal with it. 

“The medication foul-up and the total lack of communication from the Spring medical team was the last straw,” she wrote. “I have to believe that I’m not the only one who experienced this issue. Spring Fertility is funded by private equity. It’s not a healthcare business. It’s an egg-freezing factory and it doesn’t provide the highly personalized support that you are sold.”

A host of one-star reviews by people who say they used to work for Spring Fertility offer a glimpse at its internal practices. Only 45% of people who left comments on the job review site Glassdoor recommended working at the chain, which runs eight clinics in Oregon, New York, and California, including two in San Francisco and one each in Oakland and Sunnyvale.

“Compensation is low relative to the workload,” wrote a Glassdoor poster who claimed to be a former employee of the Sunnyvale clinic. “The team is frequently short-staffed, leading to expectations of completing the work of multiple people while facing criticism from management for taking breaks, often delayed by hours.”

“High patient load is given to employees who are not ready,” a self-described former staffer wrote about one of the San Francisco clinics. 

“The management didn’t seem to know how to do their jobs fully or care about their team,” another proclaimed former staffer of the Sunnyvale clinic wrote. “They treat their staff poorly and feel like a clique/sorority, especially if you’re new. Lots of drama with staff. Patients were always complaining about quality of care as well. I wouldn’t work there as an employee or go there as a patient.”

One of the most egregious complaints was relayed nearly a year ago in a Google review about the Oakland clinic. Purportedly written by a former anesthesiologist named Dr. Paula Berg, whom The Standard was unable to reach for comment, it describes how her daughter wound up in the ICU after a botched egg retrieval. When Berg brought up what happened to the clinic, staff chalked it up to a “communication problem,” she wrote.

“I am a physician and practiced for almost 40 years and I can tell you that the problem was definitely not a communication problem,” Berg wrote. “It was poor quality medical care. … This clinic is running a money making business, harvesting your eggs is just a way for them to harvest dollars. It bears no resemblance to the practice of medicine.”

Chang, who works as an architect in the Bay Area, said that at age 45, she’s now given up on bearing children. The only child of a father with a terminal illness, she had dreamed of letting him feel the joy of being a grandparent.

Nearly a year after her traumatic visit to Spring Fertility, Chang said, she and her partner are still struggling to cope. 

“The embryos that were lost were likely our last chance,” she said.

Chang said Spring Fertility promised her a free egg retrieval and IVF if she agreed to sign away her right to sue. After trying for years to have children — undergoing the painful, invasive process of three egg retrievals — there was no question how she would respond. 

She declined the offer. 

“I want them to admit what they did and be held accountable,” she said. “I would like to know what steps they will take to ensure that things like this don’t happen to anyone else.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from Spring Fertility.