Fertility Startup With a ‘Profit Mindset’ Pushes Doctors for More Egg Retrievals
Kindbody told doctors to increase the number of egg retrievals they perform amid a push for profitability, internal documents show. The company said its goal is to achieve 4,500 pregnancies.
In September, the fertility startup Kindbody gathered its doctors at a weekend retreat in a Los Angeles hotel. They bonded over morning yoga and swapped best practices for helping women conceive babies.
But an announcement by Kindbody executives cast a pall over the event. The company was burning through cash. If it was going to turn a profit and go public, the 32 reproductive endocrinologists would need to raise the number of monthly egg retrieval attempts they perform by 12, according to physicians who received performance plans reviewed by Bloomberg. For some, this meant doubling procedures. At the retreat and in the days following it, several physicians pushed back vocally, according to people familiar with the talks, calling the targets unreasonable and warning they could incentivize physicians to encourage intrusive, expensive treatments to patients who don't necessarily need them. The people familiar asked not to be identified to discuss internal matters.